The 16th Century Religious Wars And Today’s Copyright Monopoly Wars Have More In Common Than You Think

Rick Falkvinge
January 20, 2013
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People in power have always tried to prevent the common folk from obtaining knowledge that threatens their power. This happened in the 16th century, and it is happening now.

The group in society that can control what the other groups know and don’t know will rise to power in every other aspect. Therefore, information technology has always been policed and even militarized to some extent, by any group that obtains the ability to control it.

It has been the case since the dawn of civilization that some group has told everybody else what the world looks like, how it works, and what happens in it. (Usually, that group is placed at the center of that particular world view in one way or another.) This continues today, with governments all over the world trying to put their spin of events on the newsflow, putting themselves in a good light to literally get away with murder.

The quest for the net’s liberty is not a fight for some silly right to download free music. It is much larger than that: it breaks a hegemony that has stood for millennia.

This is why the old guard is terrified of the Internet. It’s not that you can copy and spread their propaganda without asking – heck, that’s what they want, and have always wanted. What they fear is that you can fact-check it and publish your findings without asking anybody’s permission. Or worse still, you can start communicating your own view of the world, rather than relating everything you think to their image of the world.

All of this has happened before.

When the printing press was invented, it wasn’t a revolutionary invention as such – it was a revolutionary combination of four other inventions: metal movable type, block pressing, oil-based inks, and cheap cloth-based paper. It revolutionized society by its ability to distribute information cheaply, quickly, and accurately.

At its invention, Gutenberg pictured the Catholic Church using the printing press to distribute its bibles better and faster, being able to get a more consistent interpretation of Christianity out to the smallest village. But that’s not quite what happened.

Rather, a new movement emerged, one that was much better at using the new technology, and which used its superior ability to distribute information in getting the upper hand over the Catholic Church. It was called Protestantism and it differed from Catholicism in one crucial aspect: It printed bibles in people’s own languages.

The power to interpret the bible from Latin had been shattered, ruined, destroyed – and with it, a large amount of the power of the Catholic Church. They tried every trick in the book to put the cat back in the bag and sabotage this technology – up to and including the death penalty, which was instituted in France on January 13, 1535, against the crime of using a printing press at all.

It didn’t work. The cat was indeed out of the bag. People could publish and distribute their own ideas. The hegemony fell, but not without some 200 years of horrible wars. On the surface, they were about minute details of Christianity – about how you should go about worshipping a particular god.

Looking closer at the situation, a bloody war between Catholicism and Protestantism seems odd and puzzling. They are two branches of the same religion that worship the same god, using the same instruction manual. Only the language of the instruction manual differs – one branch has it in local languages, the other branch has its instruction manual in Latin. Why was this worth 200 years of warfare across the entire known world at the time?

The differences are indeed superficial, but the consequences of those differences are not. In one branch, it means that those who know Latin – the clergy and academics – get the ability to tell everybody else what to do, and it was ruled in a strict religious top-down hierarchy. In the other branch, that power of interpreting the instruction manual (the bible) rested with the people themselves.

The religious wars were never about religion as such. They were about who held the power of interpretation, about who controlled the knowledge and culture available to the masses. It was a war of gatekeepers of information.

Does this narrative feel familiar?

Interestingly, one of the methods used by the people on the Catholic side of the fight was to suppress dissent by censoring the printing press. While criminal and harsh penalties didn’t work, commercial incentives to kill freedom of speech worked flawlessly. Mary I of England gave a printing monopoly to London’s printing guild, the London Company of Stationers, on May 4, 1557. This monopoly gave them exclusive rights to printing in all of England, in exchange for allowing the Queen’s censors to prevent any threatening ideas from seeing the light of day.

This monopoly was very beneficial for the new gatekeepers – the printers – and the ruling class alike, with every member of the public losing their freedom of information from it. But how would those members of the public know what ideas were never before their eyes, and understand their impact to society?

This monopoly stands to this day. It was the copyright monopoly that started like this.

Yes, that means that you can view today’s copyright monopoly wars as a logical continuation of the 16th century religious wars. There is nothing new under the sun.

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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Dan2546

Let the fighting
begin
Past Tense

So Rick how tell how your own ideas (or of people you personally know) have been censored by this copyright monopoly?
- cgimusic
  
  One obvious example is the Megaupload Song. It was censored by the music industry with a false copyright claim.
  - SoundnuoS
    
    Nope, still there. See how censorship can be fought without giving up copyright?
    - cgimusic
      
      Of course the copyright claim was eventually revoked but how much do you think a viral marketing campaign can be ruined by suspending it half way through? I don’t approve of the ability to take down a video that you don’t like for days or even weeks just because you can pretend you own the copyright. The burden of proof should be on the claimant.
    - Emil Kirkegaard
      
      That it is still possible to find does not imply that it wasn’t censored. It just means the censorship ultimately failed to suppress the information entirely.
    - Simplistic or Nuanced
      
      If copyright wasn’t just ignored by the majority of people.
      Censorship would be copyright.
      No right to copy = exclusive right to censor.
      
      Just GET the “”right to copy”" for a news story about something.
      HEY….. you can censor the story….only you have the “right” to tell it.
      
      The vast majority do in fact ignore copyright btw….
      
      They sing Happy Birthday without paying copyright fees (Pirate extremists)
      
      Censorship can NOT be fought while fully, truly enforcing existing copyright.
    - fallacy
      
      A group of poor people.
      Singing Happy birthday.
      No money to pay for copyright.
      Fine them.
      Cant pay.
      Jail them.
      Thieves should be punished.
      It’s not censorship.
      It’s copyright.
      If they didn’t sing.
      No jail.
    - Guest
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      They used copyright to censor a 100% legal song.
      
      Keeping copyright is not even an option.
    - Predator
      
      Yes but thanks to internet not thank to your boss. This is because your boss no longer control the distribution of music and video. This is what he does not like. He does not like people putting stuff on the net sometime way better than his shit. Look at the metal rock Adagio for example.
      
      “-Oh! no! the people finally found the great music! What am I going to do with my pile of craps?”
      
      And this is also why he is spending a fortune in army of trolls trying to spread fake opinion on forums and comment sections. In vain. . .
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      You mean after the actual owner of the song – Megaupload – had to reverse the takedown using a great deal of effort?
      
      SoundnuoS, a Censorship that can be fought that way is a censorship by default. What you argue for is a society where if anyone objects the one who speaks is silenced first, then has to fight for his right to speak in court.
      
      In other words, you argue for a society where “freedom of speech” is curtailed by a “guilty until proven innocent” paradigm.
    - Andrew Lee
      
      The point is it should have never been fucked with in the first place. You do know filing false copyright claims is very illegal. Not that anyone cares because if they did there would be a lot of people in jail for it.
      
      I mean these fucking nerve… Do you see pirates claiming to actually own the shit they upload? Hell no…
    - SoundnuoS
      
      It’s kind of like how a guard suspecting you of shoplifting can hold you in the store until the police show up. Then you go through things with the police and if the store is wrong you’re let go.
      
      With DMCA, the final burden of proof is on the claimant. If they can’t prove ownership of the song the video gets put back up.
      DMCA’s also concern very specific items, i.e. situations where prior copyright exists. In reality they won’t stop anyone from expressing new original ideas.
      
      I’ve been trying to google it but debating the Megaupload song is hard since no one has the exact facts as to why it was DMCAd in the first place.
      There are pages who claim the DMCA request originated with the artists and that some of them had not consented to be portrayed in the video.
      It’s possible the artists were misled about the video when they signed the agreement.
      In that case the DMCA (while justified) was withdrawn simply to avoid bad pr.
      
      If the DMCA was issued just because some artists were embarrassed about the result, but all the agreements were otherwise ok, then it wasn’t justified, but since the burden of proof is on the claimant, the video was reinstated.
      Copyright hasn’t censored anyone in this case.
      
      This thing gets more complicated by the fact that the song (like in the Lego case) isn’t “art for art’s sake” but a commercial.
      It’s ironic because the DMCA has given it publicity far beyond what it’s artistic qualities (subjective) would merit. Some people would pay big money for that kind of pr.
      
      In cases where it isn’t about a commercial and things go viral, they usually don’t get DMCAd, they get signed (see Justin Beiber), so from that pov this is pretty much a non-argument.
      
      And “Happy Birthday” is also a non-argument, since a group of poor people singing to each other falls entirely within fair use.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      It’s kind of like how a guard suspecting you of shoplifting can hold you in the store until the police show up.
      
      They actually have no legal right to do so. That’s called confinement, and it’s against the law. The only people who allow it are those who are either not well versed in the law (like yourself) or those who are intimidated enough by authority figures to let people violate their civil rights.
    - Anyone
      
      @SoundnuoS
      having the video offline for a week or two is no censorship to you?
      
      the DMCA has to die, if you don’t want your content shared, keep it to yourself, but stop bitching about “piracy” and crippling the free internet
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      Real censorship is when the video unjustifiably gets taken down and stays down without anyone having any possibility to do anything about it.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
      
      “Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.”
      
      Nothing in there about how it doesn’t constitute censorship if the speech is restored at a later point. I don’t understand your statement about “real” censorship. It’s like being a little bit pregnant. It’s either censored or it’s not.
    - Anyone
      
      so having to jump through hoops makes it not censorship?
      it still is censorship, many people will not bother jumping through the hoops and just accept it, because it takes so much time
      
      DMCA is nothing more than modern day book burning
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      If the DMCA affects someone putting up copyrighted material, then it does exactly what it’s supposed to right?
      
      That means the only ones potentially having a problem with unjustifiable DMCAs are people creating original works.
      
      A very popular meme on this page when it comes to people creating stuff is “adapt or die”.
      In this case the person doing the creating has to adapt to the fact of having to make a counter-claim if they feel the DMCA is unjustified.
      That’s a lot smaller of a nuisance than having to adapt to a life without paychecks.
      Creators are adapting, the DMCA is one way of making sure people who put up copyrighted material have to adapt as well.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      It’s so cute the way you act like your hyperbole is the same as fact. “Life without paychecks.” That’s adorable.
    - Anyone
      
      so how was the Megasong copyrighted by Universal?
    - Whatever
      
      “It’s kind of like how a guard suspecting you of shoplifting can hold you in the store until the police show up. ”
      
      Actually they can’t (nobody without police powers). They can try to arrest/keep you but cannot use any violence to hold you. There is also no reason for any innocent person to wait for the police because another person says so. But times are changing and it might not be the same in all countries.
      
      “if the store is wrong you’re let go.”
      
      There is a big difference as the store or guard can now be sued for abduction. There is no such realistic possibility in DCMA.
      
      The store also doesn’t mistakenly hold 100′s of customers hostage because of failing automated systems.
      
      DMCA was clearly written by the MAFIAA as no consequences have been added to this law. They probably knew very well from the beginning the would have millions of false claims. Like the tobacco industry also knew very well their products were unhealthy.
    - Guest
      
      “Real censorship is when the video unjustifiably gets taken down and stays down without anyone having any possibility to do anything about it.”
      
      HAHAHAHAHAHA
      
      What kind of bullshit fantasy-logic is that?
      
      Well, I guess I can go around stabbing people and if they don’t die then I never really attacked them. Correct?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Whatever & Guest
      
      >What kind of bullshit fantasy-logic is that?
      
      Just a slight sense of proportion. There’s a great deal of hysteria here concerning censorship, but we all know that if governments wish to silence someone they have a number of other means at their disposal. Bradley Manning is not being held because of copyright infringment.
      
      >Actually they can’t (nobody without police powers). They can try to arrest/keep you but cannot use any violence to hold you.
      
      Just like no one can actually hold you within Youtube (or wherever your file got DMCAd). You’re free to surf elsewhere and post your file on any number of sites or even mail it to someone.
      As a means of censorship the DMCA is a very minor nuisance.
      
      I’ll repost this one which kind of is the meat of the argument:
      
      If the DMCA affects someone putting up copyrighted material, then it does exactly what it’s supposed to, right?
      
      That means the only ones potentially having a problem with unjustifiable DMCAs are people creating original works.
      
      A very popular meme on this page when it comes to people creating stuff is “adapt or die”.
      In this case the person doing the creating has to adapt to the fact of having to make a counter-claim if they feel the DMCA is unjustified.
      That’s a lot smaller of a nuisance than having to adapt to a life without paychecks.
      Creators are adapting, the DMCA is one way of making sure people who put up copyrighted material have to adapt as well.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Two words:
      
      chilling effect.
      
      When the automated system is “accidentally” censoring valid speech, and there are no repercussions because ‘it’s automatic so it wasn’t intentional, so you can’t blame us, it’s not perjury’ that is so much bullshit that the DMCA should be completely disregarded until they can get their shit together and act like grown adults. You want us to be held accountable for our actions without the door swinging both ways just because you have more money for lawyer fees? I don’t buy that.
      
      Chilling effect. It’s the statement that absolutely NO accidental suppression of speech is a tolerable amount.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “It’s kind of like how a guard suspecting you of shoplifting can hold you in the store until the police show up. Then you go through things with the police and if the store is wrong you’re let go.”
      
      Like hell it is.
      
      A “store” means you are, in fact, on PRIVATE PROPERTY. And the guard can in most jurisdictions not hold you unless the guard can already satisfactorily prove malfeasance. Such as you him directly observing you palming an item. The takedowns practiced are the equivalent of person A saying that person B has an item carried by the store in their window and the guard should leave the store, go to person B’s house, and have them remove it from public view..
      
      “If the DMCA affects someone putting up copyrighted material, then it does exactly what it’s supposed to right?”
      
      Not if the copyright holder is the one being affected by someone else’s claim. The only proper procedure is this – the claimant first proves they own the work. Only after that does the video get pulled.
      And any false claim is called acting in bad faith.
      
      Any other method is reversing “burden of proof” meaning that everyone accused is considered guilty until they can prove innocence.
      
      “A very popular meme on this page when it comes to people creating stuff is “adapt or die”.
      
      Indeed – when a market niche changes
      No where has anyone – ever – used the meme “adapt or die” as a terminology meant to ensure the acceptance of the abolition or circumvention of human and civil rights for the majority. That’s quite a straw man you put up. Unfortunately that sort of adaptation means acceptance
      
      “In this case the person doing the creating has to adapt to the fact of having to make a counter-claim if they feel the DMCA is unjustified.”
      
      No. Anyone trying to speak will be able to speak as long as no one objects. This puts free speech in a shallow grave.
      
      “That’s a lot smaller of a nuisance than having to adapt to a life without paychecks.”
      
      Making free speech conditional on whether ANYONE objects to what is being expressed is, to you, a smaller nuisance than a small minority industry being unable to run their market model? I think not.
      
      “Creators are adapting, the DMCA is one way of making sure people who put up copyrighted material have to adapt as well.”
      
      They are. If you run a risk of having your own material removed because someone else has discovered the DMCA’s convenient use as an “anti-ceompetitive measure” the solution is to place the material where takedowns have no reach. And this is why the internet has for the last ten years steadily been evolving away from centralized control.
      
      In the end all the material is still available somewhere easily reached and all the DMCA’s unwarranted takedowns really do is educate the general citizenry about the foolishness of putting information up within reach of centralized control.
      
      DMCA takedowns, domain seizures, ip blocks, DNS poisoning…every measure made to implement “control” has simply meant that vast swathes of internet users now choose more reliable ways of keeping their information accessible. Because people like you, apparently dumbstruck with admiration over the clever legal maneuvers, are failing to realize that you are removing both functionality and reliability from the world wide web – when alternatives exist.
      
      At the end of that road lie clients which connect you to the darknets and a decentralized internet encrypted and anonymized at every level as easily as the current model allows you to open a browser.
      
      From the view of a techie I applaud the move as it brings security home for every end user. As a pirate I deplore the reason this will happen.
      
      But I don’t really see any reason you have to applaud. At all. Such a migration will remove all of the old model as far as you are concerned, while also hindering a new one from getting in. That window of opportunity rapidly closing? It’s the current napster moment. The world will move along, irrespective of what few musicians have to say about how they think it ought to move.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Since there’s always the possibility of a counter claim the grave is shallow indeed.
      No one can actually be stopped permanently by an unjustified DMCA. Considering that intentional use of DMCAs to block legitimate content seems pretty non-existant (if the mega song is the best example), imo the worrying here is a bit overdone.
      
      The fact that anyone issueing a false DMCA opens them up for liability should also act as a deterrent for that.
      Reading further on the Mega song seems to indicate that DMCA wasn’t even used in the takedown. Has Kim Dotcom successfully sued Universal on this, and if not, why not?
      
      If you’re demanding that nothing should be done because it’s possible that mistakes will be made, then the end point is that we can’t really have any criminal punishments at all, because someone, somewhere will be innocent.
      
      >- when alternatives exist
      
      What are the alternatives?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      Since the consequences of getting a DMCA notice are nill and a counter claim can be made any chilling effects are negligible imo.
      
      It certainly isn’t stopping people from keeping on posting copyrighted material on Youtube, it just gives the rights holders a way to get it down.
      
      One alternative is to remove the law and hold the services legally responsible for what their users post. No one seems to be too happy about that option either.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Since there’s always the possibility of a counter claim the grave is shallow indeed.
      No one can actually be stopped permanently by an unjustified DMCA.”
      
      In what fantasy land are you living?
      
      Let me put this in perspective. The counter claim must contain proof. The original takedown must not. That is by definition reversal of burden of proof.
      
      And yes, this is not only censorship but a vast blow against standard rule of law. When the initial claim has an equity of the proof required by the counterclaim and a judge makes a ruling, THEN and only then will the DMCA be less than insane.
      
      And the problem is not a “permanent stop”. If I prevent you, by a loose remark, from riding your car for two weeks while you have to prove your right to use it, that is bad enough.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      I live in the land where articles on the net tell me no one has to have proof to make a counter claim:
      http://www.southflorida.edu/policy/dmca/CounterClaim.aspx
      
      The person making the counter claim just has to make the same statement of good faith the original DMCA notifier has to.
      
      After that the material will be reinstated within 10-14 days and whoever made the original DMCA has to decide whether to take the matter to court or not. That’s where both party’s will have to present proof as to who actually owns the material.
      
      The only problem here is the 10-14 day period where the material remains down.
      And frankly, if that’s needed to have the possibility of getting infringing material down at all, then it’s worth it imo.
      The alternative is to make service providers responsible for what their users upload, and they definitely didn’t want that.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “The person making the counter claim just has to make the same statement of good faith the original DMCA notifier has to.”
      
      As Megaupload did – repeatedly – and repeatedly had it taken down. Assuming you are some form of corporation or are in the habit of routinely rubberstamping out DMCA’s it’s child’s play to simply add one more url to the ones sent out. In fact, it’s usually more trouble to remove a url from that list once it’s there.
      
      In short the counterclaims present far more of a problem for the defendant in this case. Which is a good example of why the real effects of a “guilty until proven innocent” paradigm such as this is bad.
      
      “After that the material will be reinstated within 10-14 days and whoever made the original DMCA has to decide whether to take the matter to court or not. That’s where both party’s will have to present proof as to who actually owns the material.”
      
      Let me see here…
      
      1) I tell the police you have offended me, the police immediately lock you up but will release you within 10-14 days as soon as you claim innocence…
      
      2) I tell a hotel owner you have stolen from me and the hotel owner immediately kicks you into the street, but you do get your room back in 10-14 days assuming you object loudly over the proceedings…
      
      3) A company sends a complaint claiming another company infringes on it’s patents, the other company is barred from selling their product immediately for a period of time, assuming the other company objects…
      
      Hell, even other Immaterial Property law does not work with the lunacy of the DMCA, then.
      
      “The only problem here is the 10-14 day period where the material remains down.
      And frankly, if that’s needed to have the possibility of getting infringing material down at all, then it’s worth it imo.”
      
      See above for why it is not. You are claiming copyright infringement is unlawful but reserve the right to expose other innocent people for worse offenses because you can’t be bothered ensuring that the law must follow proportionality and reason? Thousands of them, thanks to the million or so DMCA’s Google alone picks up per month?
      
      Let’s assume the US DoJ ends up wrongfully arresting people to the tune of thousands every month and we’ll see how far your argument flies.
      Oh. as well as an arthritic sloth, it seems.
      
      “The alternative is to make service providers responsible for what their users upload, and they definitely didn’t want that.”
      
      Your answer to criticism on a routine which violates the common precepts of law is to suggest that the alternative is to abolish messenger immunity?
      
      I have a better alternative. Each DMCA claim is a request for an injunction which either has to be proven outright, or which enables a false claim to be penalized should the one whose material got taken down desire to press the case in court. Any DMCA claim which cannot be proven outright is by default assumed to be made in bad faith.
      
      Because you have no business issuing any claims on material you can’t even be sure you own the rights to.
      
      Or we could reform copyright. Eventually this is what will happen.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      The problem with Megaupload is that it seems it wasn’t taken down using DMCA.
      Therefore judging the DMCA from that gets difficult.
      
      As my question “Should we get rid of jail time for rape, because innocent people have and will be accused?” was dismissed as irrelevant, I think your two first analogies are equally irrelevant. This concerns infringing material and the period of time it gets taken down.
      
      Your next example is relevant if we substitute patents with copyrighted material:
      
      3) A company sends a complaint (unjustfied, my addition) claiming another company infringes on it’s patents, the other company is barred from selling their product immediately for a period of time, assuming the other company objects…
      
      And I’ll add the situation where it’s possible for a company to unjustifiably take down negative reviews of their products.
      
      The thing is, everything I’ve read about the DMCA so far indicates that this would be risky for the one making the false claim. They perjure themselves (a criminal offence) and open themselves up for being sued.
      
      This part of your suggestion seems to be in effect already:
      >or which enables a false claim to be penalized should the one whose material got taken down desire to press the case in court.
      
      First link in a Google search:
      http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/internet-law/consequences-of-filing-a-false-dmca-takedown-request/
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “The problem with Megaupload is that it seems it wasn’t taken down using DMCA.Therefore judging the DMCA from that gets difficult.”
      
      Correct, and apparently if we are to believe the DoJ, they haven’t really decided on why Megaupload WAS taken down at all. Curious, isn’t it?
      
      “As my question “Should we get rid of jail time for rape, because innocent people have and will be accused?” was dismissed as irrelevant, I think your two first analogies are equally irrelevant. “
      
      Your question was dismissed as irrelevant because it is. If you had phrased it as “Should we get rid of burden of proof because offenders get off the hook” it would not have been.
      
      Instead you moved the goal posts which is a very dishonest way of sidestepping an issue in a debate.
      
      You pro-copyright maximalists are very predictable here. The question was not regarding penalties, but on the ease with which such penalties can be assigned.
      
      And this is what makes your entire comment essentially worthless – the DMCA’s can be handed out with little to no effort, will implement sanction by default, and requires strenuous effort in order to defend against.
      
      This is what makes them unacceptable.
      
      And the straw man you put up somewhere with “the only valid option being to assign the ISP’s the role of monitoring communication” was an even more blatant dishonesty.
      
      Honesty on your behalf would be helped if you admitted the stated assumption that civil rights are irrelevant to you if they come in the way of copyright. Because that is essentially what your last three arguments on this issue have boiled down to.
      
      Skip the polite language and the wordwalls and I find nothing more than a “Baghdad Bob”-Anon summary.
      
      You will not persuade any pirate either here or anywhere else unless you manage to pound home to everyone that copyright must be considered more important than civil or human rights of free speech and property ownership.
      
      Good luck with that. We will always be here to call bull on any attempts to wrap that message in more palatable words.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      Counter claims only require the same statement of good faith as the original DMCA. Hardly a strenuos effort. If it moves on after that then it’s the court’s decision, based on who can prove ownership.
      The suggestion you gave as alternative implementation for DMCAs is already mostly implemented. I.e. perjury for false claims and opening the claimant up to being sued.
      This means frivolous and unjustified claims are risky to make.
      Considering this, and that the max period something stays down after a counter claim is made will be 14 days, I do think this is justifiable.
      
      Copyright won’t be in conflict with civil or human rights of free speech nor with property ownership no matter how many times you repeat it.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      As far as I’m concerned SoundnuoS has completely undermined himself. He’s made claims that he’s a starving musician and that he needs copyright to stay out of a cardboard box and eat…yet when I tried to get a link to his blog so that I could actually purchase some perfectly legal music from the guy, he isn’t willing to offer it up. He’s completely full of shit and anything out of his mouth is invalid because of his lies.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      I told you exactly what I do and why I’m writing here. This line of arguing is comparable to blocking your ears and refusing to listen. Handy in keeping the faith, but…
      The arguments I make are there for anyone to read, the research and links i dig up is there for anyone to see and judge for themselves. No lies there.
- 2 sides / same coin
  
  Anyone who tries to share a legal file at no cost.
  Anyone who tries to access thepiratebay from the UK.
  
  If the file is not illegal.
  Sharing the legal file must be made illegal….. Censor the “file sharing”.
  Copyright IS a limitation.(not a fucking right to exclusively share)
  Censoring is a limitation. (not a fucking right to exclusively share)
  
  When people start looking at censorship as the “exclusive RIGHT to share” …
  Humanity is fucked.
  
  Some already do look at censorship in that way.
  The governments have an “exclusive RIGHT to share” info on what they do !
  - Guest
    
    ZOMG he speaks in tongues!
    - Anonymous
      
      @LRN2Comprehend
      
      Takes one to know one, retard!
  - Who
    
    “When people start looking at censorship as the “exclusive RIGHT to share” …
    Humanity is fucked”
    
    they already look @ it that way were you been?
    
    your “exclusive RIGHT to share” is in violation of “copyrights” according to them.
    stopping the sharing is the censorship.
    
    Y do you think they want sharing stopped?
    - Guest
      
      I also noticed this but my comment above about speaking in tongues invited the trolls into the thread evidently.
    - Who
      
      @Guest: the problem is the TROLLS are going by MADE UP law for some reason and just come in and start running there mouth. there to scared of what the TRUE law says and make crap up to cower behind it.
- Ray
  
  You obviously work for them (Copyright Monopoly) or you haven’t been paying attention to the countless problems with legal content being taken down from many websites and the problem legal owners face just trying to get the content back. Musicians getting threats for uploading their own music…You are a Troll.. You can find that information here on this very site…… how tell how..WHF is that.
Steve Smith

A-men
Heisenberg7

I’m always amazed at Rick’s ability to draw interesting but indeed accurate parallels between two situations, and this one is by far his best to date.
- Bloaxor
  
  Definitely, I’m genuinely impressed by exactly how accurate this comparision is.
  Like, whoah. Amazing article. Bravo.
  - http://twitter.com/Falkvinge Falkvinge
    
    Thank you!
- http://twitter.com/Falkvinge Falkvinge
  
  Thanks mate, I appreciate it!
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  Rick certainly has the ability to collate information and deduce from it.
  
  However, the correlation between the censorship of the church and the censorship of copyright isn’t a paralell. Copyright was when it was first implemented a straight-out mechanism of religious oppression used by gatekeepers in power (Mary I).
  
  And Rick is not the origin of the fact-finding, I believe. Though he does a very good job of presenting it. Reading through a history book or from the mouth of a historian it’s dusty history which doesn’t fully impact until you realize that we are living under a 16th-century tool of censorship today.
  
  http://copyright-debate.co.uk/?p=184
  - Heisenberg7
    
    In this context “correlation” and “parallel” are interchangeable, and therefore my comment stands.
    
    “The religious wars were never about religion as such. They were about who held the power of interpretation, about who controlled the knowledge and culture available to the masses. It was a war of gatekeepers of information.”
    
    If you replace his word “religous” with the word “copyright”, it still fits.
    
    Have you heard the saying about the Three M’s? Money, Military, and Media. You control these, control society at large. Government handles the first two and acts on behalf of the third. And it all comes down to control
    - SoundnuoS
      
      The notion of a gatekeeper on expression is redundant with the internet. Anyone is free to create their original variations on ideas and publish them as they see fit.
      Copyright is stopping no one from this.
      
      You’re free to publish under a CC license as you wish, material in the public domain is free to be distributed as you wish. You’re also free to copyright your work and try to sell it if you wish.
      
      Copyright is necessary because it’s the only thing that protects the person in the weakest position: the original creator.
    - Anyone
      
      @SoundnuoS:
      copyright IS stopping many people from creating
      just compare how great the sampling in hiphop was in the 80s compared to now
      in Germany an artist was successfully sued for a sample consisting of 2 notes
      if a song is running in the background of a homevideo it is regularly taken down
      if you say something negative about a company you are also likely to get taken down due with a copyright notice
      
      copyright does nothing to protect the original creator, all it does is enrich the middleman that screw over both artist and consumers
      
      the copyright system as it is today needs to be completely abolished
    - Liam Jh
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      [url]http://articles.cnn.com/2002-09-23/entertainment/uk.silence_1_peters-edition-nicholas-riddle-john-cage-trust?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ[/url]
      
      Shows the stupidity of copyright.
      
      (old news but fun)
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      Sampling can be cleared. If someone samples something that’s recognisable, then the original maker should have co-writing credit imo.
      
      Homevideos, hard to say, depends on how clearly the song is heard, should fall under fair use if not very clear imo.
      
      The example with a company is clearly allowed under fair use.
      
      And copyright is the only thing protecting the original creator, there is nothing else.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      I think it’s funny how you argue fair use as a valid defense and in the same breath claim that sampling should lead to co-writing credit. Sampling leads to transformative work in the vast majority of uses. Almost any use of sampling that I can conceive of that isn’t direct plagiarism would fall well within the four prongs of fair use. No idea why you’d think it should require clearing.
    - Anyone
      
      yes, but nowadays song have at most 2-4 samples, otherwise they’d have to pay out of their ears
      
      compare that to the 80s when songs had 100s of samples, because noone gave a flying fuck about copyright, just as it should be
      
      for example Beastie Boys “Licensed to Ill”, one of the best selling hiphop albums of all times, would have made a loss because of copyright
      they are still being sued to “achieve” that goal…
      
      how does copyright protect the original creator when he has to sell all his rights to the studio to be published?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      Well, hiphop has to adapt by making samples unrecognisable or learn to negotiate better. Seriously though, if the cost of sampling should be reconsidered then that’s something that can be accomplished through a small change of copyright law. No need to throw it away altogether.
      
      Copyright protects the original creator because he doesn’t HAVE to sell his rights to get published. He can if he wants to and copyright is the only thing that gives him any leverage in negotiations.
      Without copyright he can try to self-publish, just to immediately see his work up for sale by anyone else who wants to take it. Without copyright no one would be obligated to give him any share of the sales.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Copyright is a massive PITA even for those who aren’t supporting of copyright, like Nina Paley, who had to release Sita Sings the Blues under CC0 just to make it okay for people to use under fair use, because nobody will even try the fair use option unless they’re confident on surviving litigation…fucking stupid system we live in.
    - Anyone
      
      so before the internet how could you publish your songs without selling all the rights to a studio?
      
      with the internet now it is easier, but the media companies have to be stripped of their censor role via the DMCA, or else we are back where we were before the internet, with a few companies deciding what is “worthy” to be enjoyed
      
      copyright for non-commercial purposes (such as filesharing) has no use anymore
      I kinda sorta agree that for commercial purposes there should be copyright, so if your song is used in a commercial for example you should be paid for it
    - Whatever
      
      @Anyone
      
      I wonder why Abba doesn’t sue Madonna yet. She clearly “sampled” a whole part from their song. The MAFIAA fans would call it stealing.
      
      Guess it is the old boys (or girls) network that keeps recycling sound from each other.
    - Anyone
      
      Madonna was one of the only artists to be granted sampling rights by ABBA
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      Yes, you could publish your own stuff before the internet. It was more expensive but there was nothing stopping you. No rights had to be sold.
      
      The media companies can’t get back their gatekeeper role through using DMCAs.
      They don’t even want to. It’s thing’s going viral that they are looking for, because that’s the next big thing to sign.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “Anyone is free to create their original variations on ideas and publish them as they see fit.
      Copyright is stopping no one from this.”
      
      False. For a real-life example, see CRIA and the six billion dollar lawsuit. For another, see the megaupload song. There are numerous others. Copyright is a weapon most conveniently used by large organizations against anyone seen as “competition”. To claim it’s use by the “starving artist in the street is highly facetious.
      
      “Copyright is necessary because it’s the only thing that protects the person in the weakest position: the original creator.”
      
      Again, wrong. In practical terms copyright is a tolerable evil only when it restricts an actual commercial transaction.
      It doesn’t really matter in what position the original creator gets put when the only way the original creator can “protect” his ability to earn money by selling his work is by demanding a privilege to restrict everyone else’s property.
      
      The only reason copyright could exist in the first place is simply because there was very few ways in which it could even be violated. It can not and will not survive the information era.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Your post isn’t making much sense.
      
      I’m saying anyone is free to create a variation on for instance the basic idea of a I-VI-II-V progression. It’s being done all the time, ideas can’t be copyrighted.
      
      The CRIA case is about using someone elses work without compensation. The mega song is an unclear situation and if that’s the only example, it hardly qualifies as showing copyright being systematically used as an anti-competition weapon.
      
      As your last bit is about copyright restricting someone’s property, I’m still waiting for the reasoning behind that one.
      
      And as the fundamental problem inherent in this statement still remains, I’m going to put it back up:
      
      Copyright is necessary because it’s the only thing that protects the person in the weakest position: the original creator.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      Why would it be a massive pain in the ass to release under CC0? Just do it, no problem there.
      
      If sampling is truly transformative. If you hear a sample and go “Cool, he used the bit from xxxxx” then it’s not that transformative.
      
      What’s stopping hiphop producers from creating their own beats? Why should all composers in other genres pay the price for composers in one genre being unable (exaggerating here, just stating a principle) to come up with original material?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “The CRIA case is about using someone elses work without compensation. The mega song is an unclear situation and if that’s the only example, it hardly qualifies as showing copyright being systematically used as an anti-competition weapon.”
      
      “…Copyright is stopping no one from this.”
      
      In 300,000 cases in the example above alone, that’s just what copyright did. Stopping the original creators and rightholders – because copyright is far more a wepon against the artist/creator than it is for them.
      
      “Copyright is necessary because it’s the only thing that protects the person in the weakest position: the original creator.”
      
      That, right after just one example turning up a massive demonstration that it is the other way around? The basis for copyright has been conclusively falsified many times over.
      
      “As your last bit is about copyright restricting someone’s property, I’m still waiting for the reasoning behind that one.”
      
      By it’s very definition?
      
      Party A copies the pattern of magnetic granules possessed by party B with party B’s full consent.
      Party C then vetos party A and party B from their use of their own property as party C states that neither party A nor party B may shape their property to a certain configuration. This is what copyright in essence boils down to.
      
      What it really means is that anyone actually possessing property is now subjected by law to the whims of any other person on this planet who has ever presented any information at all since copyright takes action by default.
      
      And that is why copyright is in direct and unavoidable conflict with both property rights and free speech. Every legal debate regarding the status on copyright is quite clear on this conflict from the start.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Can I file a DMCA complaint to get this post removed? I used all these words in the past in another work, you’ve taken all my words, rearranged them, and distributed them. Unless you can prove to someone that you in fact created this post all on your own then it’s going to be taken down.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Are we talking about the same CRIA case? I’m talking about this one: http://www.thestar.com/business/article/735096–geist-record-industry-faces-liability-over-infringement
      
      The artists are suing CRIA for 6 billion because CRIA infringed on copyright. Not used copyright, infringed on it. Without copyright they’d have no case.
      
      “Copyright is necessary because it’s the only thing that protects the person in the weakest position: the original creator.”
      
      How has this been falsified? What else is there, in your opinion, in the way of law that protects a creator of immaterial goods?
      
      Re: property rights
      
      >Party C then vetos party A and party B from their use of their own property as party C states that neither party A nor party B may shape their property to a certain configuration.
      
      I’m assuming party C is the rights holder? I’ve argued several times that no one has payed enough to be able to consider the “pattern of magnetic granules” their property. Neither party A nor B have any property rights to the patterns. I don’t consider this a valid argument at the moment.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “I’m assuming party C is the rights holder? I’ve argued several times that no one has payed enough to be able to consider the “pattern of magnetic granules” their property. Neither party A nor B have any property rights to the patterns. I don’t consider this a valid argument at the moment.”
      
      If person A and person B do not own the right to shape their property, including those granules, as they wish, then they do not “own” their property at all. Because some other party is interfering with their use of their property based on the idea that a “pattern” can be owned.
      
      Indeed, even copyright law acknowledges this. “Immaterial Property” is anything but property but simply the rights to an expression. This is why you own the rights to a “work”, and the work itself as mediated in physical form is otherwise subject to ordinary ownership laws.
      
      Please explain to me any logical way in which person C can be assumed to have any ownership at all in items which to any analysis at all are wholly and completely possessions of party A and B. The answer is simply that party C can only do so if it is assumed that C has the privilege to override what person A and B are allowed to do with their own property. without party C or any belonging of party C ever directly or indirectly coming into agreement or even contact with A and B.
      
      That too is explicitly assumed by copyright law. A resulting copy is not “owned” by party C. Only the creation of it is subject to his/her approval.
      
      This is why Jeffersson’s statements still stand. And those of everyone else who has discovered just how remarkably screwed-up an assumption “copyright” really is. It only makes sense by restricting it to fiscal transactions at which point it becomes just what it is described as by Milton Friedman – a short-term monopoly on sale of a certain product.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      The answer is here, from my other post:
      
      What you’re paying for isn’t the medium, you’re paying to get an experience.
      
      The medium’s only job is to be the means to provide you with the experience. Without the experience the medium is worthless.
      
      That it’s a subjective experience doesn’t matter. Without the original creator of the material on the medium that experience would not be existing.
      
      The only way to distribute the material giving anyone the experience is on some kind of medium (cd, vinyl, cassette, file etc.) in the form of copies.
      
      Because these experiences are considered of some value by people, society has decided that the creator should have the right to charge for those copies.
      Hence copyright.
      
      Jefferson’s argument does not stand, for the reasons i showed in that thread.
      
      The work itself does not get sold unless you pay 200+ million dollars (for the latest Bond).
      The way copyright works is that you’re not paying for ownership, you’re paying for access.
      Even if you are entitled to copy the work for your own use, you’re not entitled to redistribute it without permission.
      
      It’s no more or less logical than the fact that you own the chair you bought from IKEA because you paid enough to cover the costs of production and give them a profit. If you meet someone one the way home that’s stronger than you he should be able to take the chair, yet he’s not allowed to. Where’s the logic in that?
      
      It doesn’t work the same as other kinds of ownership, because it’s not the same kind of product. It’s immaterial, an experience. You don’t get ownership of the amusement park just because you pay the entrance fee.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “It doesn’t work the same as other kinds of ownership, because it’s not the same kind of product. It’s immaterial, an experience. “
      
      Then it is not property. Simple as that. The definition of what you describe is a service.
      
      Going by your argument, “having had sex” would count as a property as well. As would “breathing”. “Immaterial property” is impossible to describe logically, and indeed, the law itself doesn’t even attempt to.
      
      Which is why copyright is always described in terms of a privilege, and intellectual “property” always very clearly defined. It requires extraordinary exceptions written in.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      The product creates an experience. Sex, like breathing is an experience. Difference. Sloppy wording on my part, but the meaning should be clear from the rest of my post.
      In the end all manufactured property, intellectual or not, is about providing a service.
      IKEA doesn’t charge for the chair because it’s made of wood. They charge for the design, sourcing of the material, building the parts, the logistics of getting it there etc.
      Only IKEA can sell or give away IKEA branded chairs and they are free to set a price.
      Only the creator of the art has the right to decide who gets to distribute the art and for what price it should be shared.
Emily Hüttler

It has been the case since the dawn of civilization that some group has told everybody else what the world looks like, how it works, and what happens in it.

LOL and Rik is a member of the STATE that still tells people what to do by force, steals money from them by force, llies, send men out to kill in wars and all the other things the State does.

Rik is the rider of the elephant in the room in the “copyright debate”; on the one hand, he says copyright is wrong, but with the other, he is for the State, its stealing, money printing and everything else it does, and he votes for it, so he has blood on his hands.

This article is nothing more than a big distraction from the real problem behind the copyright monopoly; the State. Without a violent State to enforce it, copyright would not exist. This is the true, root solution that would put Rik out of a job, which is why it is taboo for him.

Thankfully, the internet that he loves so much has carried the truth about the State and copyright to more people than ever before. Statists can no longer pretend that their way of life is right, their interpretations are correct and their acts just.

We all see the emperor Rik, and he doesn’t have any clothes!
- cgimusic
  
  You seem to be going after Rick because he is not a total anarchist. The Pirate Party winning an election is unlikely at this point but even if an anarchic state did somehow come in to being how long would it be before someone else tried to take control. I would rather have a few good people in government than have the potential for any tyrannical group with enough support to declare themselves government.
- Derrfderrf
  
  Awww look at the cute little post-mod anarchist
- Rxster
  
  Move to Africa if you don’t like the ‘State’ hon. They don’t have much of one there.
- Guest
  
  Since when did The Pirate Party = the state?
  
  Their goal is to tear down just about every single thing the state stands for(e.g., corruption, institutionalized bribery, corporate servitude, and the gatekeeping of information).
  
  Also, if you haven’t seen Rick condemn the state’s support of the copyright monopoly then you haven’t been reading his stuff for very long.
  
  Fail troll is fail.
  - Emily Hüttler
    
    You simply dont understand what the State is. The Pirate Party is a participant in the democratic State. It explicitly agrees that it should exist, that it should raise armies, and force people to pay tax. This is what Rik believes. He believes that the State should steal money from people to give it to others, and that it has a right too do this. If he does not believe this, then I would like him to come out and say this explicitly, “The State has no right to tax people, I am against the State forcing people to pay tax, which should only ever be voluntary”.
    
    The Pirate Party is against corruption, but not the State itself as an institution, and its built in violence. They are against bribery, but not the theft of money from people by force. They are against gatekeeping of information, but not the fact that the State collects this information by force. This is why Rik (presumably) is for ID Cards, and believes that the State has a ‘right’ to number everyone and force them to carry an ID Card at all times.
    
    Rik is right about one thing only; copyright. Even then, he is for incremental abolition and not overnight restoration of Liberty.
    
    Everything I have said here is a matter of fact, and is non controversial. I know that Rik is a folk hero to some, and that’s fine, only as long as you admit to what his true philosophy is, and how it actually works; on violence theft and coercion.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “…only as long as you admit to what his true philosophy is, and how it actually works; on violence theft and coercion.”
      
      Old news about the state. Even lay students of politics realize the full implication behind the “monopoly of violence”.
      
      The state, state coercion, and the violence monopoly is the price we pay in order to have the minimum of coercion and theft allotted to everyone rather than suffering the odd sociopath removing such rights from all within their reach.
      
      There are three main reasons applying to why such a central organism has been deemed necessary.
      
      1) Humanity has never evolved beyond the tribal structure. Looking at every early civilization life was hard and steeped in blood. We suffer a state in order to ensure that all of us at the end gain another 30 years of life expectancy and the right not to be owned as property by our fellow man. The state is demanded by some 99% of the population and gainsaid by no minority with leverage to veto.
      
      2) Technology has not progressed to the level where it allows every person to be self-sufficient. This demands cooperation of high level. Such cooperation is necessarily centralized to some extent in a paradigm where scarcity exists. This will always evolve into a state.
      
      3) A civilization with central and immediate guidance is better able to shape, direct, and wage wars. Hence a stateless society will always be fractured and broken by surrounding warlords until it is absorbed into a state structure.
      
      Factually, you are correct in many things you say. Philosophically your argument could be construed as interesting.
      Practically you are way out there like Baghdad Bob-Anon and Bobmail, trying to stop the tide with your voice. When we humans are ready for a stateless paradigm we’ve become Nietzshean supermen already, and won’t be what is today recognizable as “human.
Guest

interesting overview
thank you once again for the beautiful article
Anon

“This monopoly was very beneficial for the new gatekeepers – the printers – and the ruling class alike”

And that’s why we will always win. The law and those that write it are on OUR side. There’s nothing short of an armed rebellion that can threaten us, and even that won’t last long against the military.

Here’s to another several centuries of law and order and hanging pirates by the gallows. ;)
- Guest
  
  pmsl at the delusional comment.
- Trespass22
  
  “The law and those that write it are on OUR side.”
  
  You mean the side with the money. No other countries gave a crap about filesharing until the US harassed, bullied and threatened them with sanctions. Then comes the obscene amounts of special interest money to essentially buy a law. Yes, we have the best laws money can buy. You really think Biden gave a crap before the money came?
  
  When the money dries up, so will the war on sharing. the best part, we will not have to put up with your rambling incoherence any longer. “We are coming to get you”, please, give me a break and take your meds.
- Rrr
  
  Yeah, totally. I mean, prohibition worked great, right?
- Patrick
  
  why do you think the military would be on your side? we built the net. we certainly don’t care about copyrights, particularly. we do care about idiots interfering with our communications.
  - Dhris Codd
    
    The military works for the politicians.
    
    The politicians work for the media industry.
- Who
  
  “The law and those that write it are on OUR side” hmmm….seams that your are to scared to read what the TRUE law has to say as it WILLl “show you up” and make you look bad.
- Guest
  
  “And that’s why we will always win.”
  
  But you already lost years ago. The fact that you’ve never been able to do anything that slows down filesharing for a picosecond, ever, no matter what extremes you go to should leave no doubt. You lost the war and became irrelevent. In, like, the year 2000.
  
  You may think you’re still big and bad because you live in the past and refuse to accept reality, but to the rest of the world, you’re just a bunch of particularly sad clowns whose moment in the sun is long and never coming back.
  
  “The law and those that write it are on OUR side.”
  
  Yeah, and how’s that working out?
  - Guest
    
    *long gone, like my proof-reading skills…
- Guest
  
  Please, for God sake, STOP feeding the troll…
  They ARE NOT psychopaths at all…They are cyberstalkers(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking). The false accusations made by them are INTENTIONAL/ON PURPOSE.
  When you FEED a troll, you are wasting your TIME & Emotional ENERGY on it.
  Even though you may FEEL like a SMART-ASS/FACTS-ASS when you respond to a troll, but that has NO EFFECT on the troll. Because he/she KNOWS it already, but NEVER goddammit ADMIT it, but THAT’S his/her Job.
  But, the troll uses it for Monitoring/Secret Intelligence purposes. They actually fingerprint you communication style/words/geo-info.
  
  http://trollpolice.com/trolls-and-cyberstalkers/
  
  I wish TF could post a detailed article on ‘How To Bust Internet Trolls’ so that it reaches the masses.
  - IDIOCRACY
    
    “But, the troll uses it for Monitoring/Secret Intelligence purposes. They actually fingerprint you communication style/words/geo-info.”
    
    Than they are getting a real headache with mine hehe..
    
    Feeding trolls as you say, serves one and only one purpose,… showing and educating casual visitors on how wrong the whole copyright idea is and how stupid and transparent their tactics and lies are when you look a little bit deeper into their comments.
    So there is no harm in feeding trolls, it is (personally) even entertaining. hehe
    - IDIOCRACY
      
      guess my proof reading should be better too :P
      Than = then = in that case
    - Guest
      
      You still didn’t get the idea & I’m damn sure you didn’t go through the links too.
      
      NO. You are not educating casual visitors or anyone else. Welcome to 21st century. MOST of them know what to do & what not. You are just engaging the Troll more & giving him assurance that he/she WILL get a reply the next time he/she posts.
      
      Just a caution, from your reply, I noticed that you FEEL Entertained by replying to a troll. And, I believe that’s your main inner intention behind replying. I understand, it’s a kind of addiction of replying to a Troll TO PROVE that you KNOW Facts or TO SAY what is right & what not. But, for your own good, stop it immediately & think whether you want to depend on a troll to FEEL entertained.
      
      Now, I know, your fingers are tingling enough to reply, but, please move your hands away from keyboard, close your arms, calm down & just THINK for a moment.
      
      Go through links or better I’ll do that for you-
      
      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+to+stop+internet+trolls
      
      Self education first is at best worth than thinking of educating others.
  - Trespass
    
    I think you are taking this way too seriously. Feeding a troll can be entertaining, humorous, and completely harmless. Often I learn from the responses to trolls, info I hadn’t thought about or perspectives I had not considered. Just don’t take anything personally.
    
    Trolls themselves offer no useful info, have a set agenda which conflicts(intentionally), but often adds to a discussion by invoking insightful debate from others.
    
    Frankly I question whether some of the trolls here have lives. They accuse pirates of living in their parents basements, but yet cling to opportunity to jump in and respond on a site that they are a complete minority, at any time, day or night.
    
    Come on, you have to find Anon’s rants funny as well. All that “We are coming to get you” stuff, or “We are going to burn you at the stake” stuff. Doesn’t it make you feel a little sorry for his obviously pathetic life? He obviously needs to get laid.
    
    Yeah, I went through the links and know how to not feed the trolls, but really don’t buy the monitoring/conspiracy thing. I’m sure I’ve been monitored by better people and agencies than anyone trolling TF. Plus, thanks to TOR, I seriously doubt anyone would put the effort out to try to monitor me.
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “The law and those that write it are on OUR side. “
  
  Remind me: How did SOPA, PIPA and ACTA go for your side, again?
  
  “There’s nothing short of an armed rebellion that can threaten us, and even that won’t last long against the military.”
  
  Gandhi only initially set out to remove the british taxation on common salt, Jeffersson and Washington got pulled into a little spat on taxes on tea, and all Rosa Parks did was refusing to move to the back of a bus.
  
  “Here’s to another several centuries of law and order and hanging pirates by the gallows. ;)”
  
  Oh, please. I realize from your past commentary that in that little world all your own, pirates are led in chained hordes down the streets to be imprisoned together with beefy libidinous cellmates named “Tiny”, or otherwise subjected to such “withering life-crushing punishments” that their families and descendants never again dream of putting one step wrong.
  
  As for the rest of us…I’ve been looking far and wide now in the hopes of finding a piece of genuine hangman’s rope as a souvenir, but have been forced to surrender to the facts that hung pirates are very scarce. Indeed, it still seems as if the average pirate has better odds of being spontaneously struck by lightning from clear skies than even be fined for his endeavors.
  
  Before we go on mowing down your desperate cries of “Mission Accomplished”, there is just one more thing to ask: Am I addressing the real Baghdad bob or just some troll emulating him badly?
  
  [EDIT Typo ftw]
  - Guest
    
    I think we are long past the point of Poe’s law concerning the copywrong MAFIAA.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      We are indeed. That’s why it’s damn difficult to tell our dear Baghdad Bob apart from the other “Anon” trying to parody him.
      
      At the end of our dear Baghdad Bob’s little diatribe it can always be summarized as that one-liner by that other “Anon”.
      
      “Punishment. Because I like it. Hhnnglrn!”
- http://twitter.com/Falkvinge Falkvinge
  
  I’d just like to point out to everybody else what an excellent example of a G2 response this is. Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
  
  This is an example of the second level on the Gandhi scale (“G2″) – when somebody has gone from ignoring a new movemnet to being worried enough to assert their private worries in public by ridiculing the new movement (“they’re not going to be any kind of threat, look how silly they are”). Going from nothing to being described as clowns is a significant step forward for any movement, which can seem counterintuitive at first.
  
  (If Anon truly believed that “nothing short of an armed rebellion can threaten us”, he/she would absolutely not care enough to assert just that in public.)
  
  I write more about this in my upcoming book, “Swarmwise: the tactical manual to changing the world”.
  
  Cheers,
  Rick
  - tetridae
    
    I like the word movemnet ;)
SoundnuoS

Not much to fight about here. The article doesn’t really say anything, it just a statement that the internet, knowledge and free speech is good and then a short recap of history from the authors pov.

It sounds good, but without some further analysis of how copyright (supposedly) affects free speech today, it means nothing.
- Anon
  
  It also utterly ignores the important distinctions between those who take the initiatives, endure the risk and bear the cost of creation with those who merely exist and hold their (digital) hand out as if they have some right to the “information” of someone else’s labors.
  
  This is just another utopian/communist column written under the influence of too much scotch and far too little thought. There is nothing new under the sun here, either.
  - Anon
    
    if you don’t want something copied, don’t publish. we don’t need you. just die.
  - Heisenberg7
    
    What you fail to comprehend is that the information of someone else’s labors is simply a collection of information from several other people’s labors, and those collections are also collections, and so on. This is the very reason information in this context should be free, and not stifled by a copyright monopoly. Watch Everything Is A Remix for a better explanation.
    
    But then, expecting the likes of you to actually look at empirical data is a fools errand.
  - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
    
    “….the important distinctions between those who take the initiatives, endure the risk and bear the cost of creation….”
    
    For a second there it looked to me like you might be talking about all those who work the fields and sweat in the mines and tend to the dying.
    
    You remind me of the elderly southern Belle on the Ante-deluvian Mississippi Plantation who turns to her genteel husband waving her white handkerchief toward the tallest of a long line of black men walking past the broad veranda of their mansion and proclaims:
    
    “Darling! That Niger John! He sure one lazy nigger! Look how he walks, all stooped! Goddamm! We ought to beat his ass! Doesn’t work worth a damm!”
    
    The official name of the country is The United States of America…..
    
    It isn’t your Banana Plantation yet!!
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “…utterly ignores the important distinctions between those who take the initiatives, endure the risk and bear the cost of creation…”
    
    Tap water does much the same as far as any business stocking bottled water is concerned. I don’t see any special laws on the tablets for those people?
    
    If you can not run a business in an environment where everyone does in fact own their property without being surrounded by some semi-religious dogma as to what they can or can not do with it – such as copying or allowing another to copy information on it or from it – then off the market you should go.
    
    Because we are not living in a communist society where it is desirable that the state allows special laws to support redundant and failing business.
    - Anoni
      
      Um, I seem to recall several banks that were not worth sh*t getting bailed out.
      And you realy need to look into the subsidizing of..well almost everything. Steel mills and oil companies in USA, farmers in Europe and so on.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Um, I seem to recall several banks that were not worth sh*t getting bailed out.”
      
      Precisely. Now when the soviets tried this they went bust.
      
      And judging from the current signs, we’re about to. Because we have tried to create a free market where “too big to fail” has become a keyword.
      
      Aside from being initially wealthier and having better infrastructure, we are currently plowing down a path where the end is a completely planned economy with no surprises. Guess where that takes us, now that everyone tries to avoid the fact that the growth of the market has and must have real costs as well.
      
      The worst direct impact of communism, and plan economy in particular, is that it tries to fudge the numbers and replace them with ideology. As we have been doing for the past two decades.
- Guest
  
  No further analysis is needed when we’ve got shining examples like the MegaUpload song being taken down over a bogus copyright claim and the censorship of the Czech Pirate Party by LEGO.
  
  If you’re still asking “how does copyright affect free speech?” in the year 2013 then you are living under a rock.
  
  “endure the risk and bear the cost of creation”
  
  The cost of creation is often times $0(that’s certainly what it costs every time I sit down in front of my computer to hammer out lines of code), but the copyright monopoly and its little helpers try to sell this myth that it costs profound amounts of money to create, and this cost can only be covered by signing your soul away to the monopoly. Which can then proceed to lay claim to your earnings and rob you blind, although of course they won’t tell you that.
  
  “This is just another utopian/communist column written under the influence of too much scotch and far too little thought. “
  
  Which, oddly enough, you can’t refute. Why is that exactly? I mean, if it’s written under the influence of too much scotch and too little thought then it must be mighty easy to refute it. So why aren’t you?
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “I mean, if it’s written under the influence of too much scotch and too little thought then it must be mighty easy to refute it. So why aren’t you?”
    
    Because then he’d have to come up with a refutal which included the identical doubts put forth by Milton Friedman and Thomas Jeffersson as well.
    
    And I very much doubt our trolling little “Anon” has the Chutzpah to come right out and say that either Friedman or Jeffersson were simply drunk while clarifying the problems with “intellectual property”.
  - SoundnuoS
    
    Re: The Megaupload song, see the other thread on this page. About Lego, see the threads on that page.
    
    I still think some further analysis is needed because I really don’t see free speech being censored by copyright in 2013.
    
    The cost of creation is rarely 0 (and is often significantly more) outside the world of coding, which probably is why coders keep suggesting the solutions they do. The time value of creation is also never 0, even in coding.
    
    Falkvinge’s article can’t be refuted because there isn’t that much in it to refute. It’s devoid of substance when it comes to the subjects we’ve been discussing i.e. how copyright is used today.
    - Anyone
      
      if I take a movie and make a copy of it the cost to make that copy is basically 0 (small amounts of electricity are used)
      do you want to dispute this fact?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      You’re not creating a new work in the process. You’re neither adding nor removing value. The work has already been made by the original creator, and that’s what’s copyrighted. The cost of creating the original work is not 0. If you share your copy you’re simply doing unauthorised and uncompensated redistribution.
    - Anyone
      
      so you are agreeing with me that copies are worthless?
      I guess that is something
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      But the original work is not, being copied doesn’t diminish that value.
    - Anyone
      
      so?
      the original work is not for sale
      
      for the same reason the Mona Lisa is priceless, but you can easily print your own version for pennies
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      With the Mona Lisa you can, since it’s in the public domain. More recent works are not.
      
      And copyrighted originals can be sold. If someone wants to they can sell all the rights to their song. It wouldn’t be smart to do it for 9.99 though.
      But you pointed out something. In theory the maximum value of a work of art is infinite. Buying original works of art is generally reserved for the rich, because originals tend to be expensive.
      
      Basically, copyright is the reason you’re not paying 200+ million dollars to go see the latest James Bond. We’re all paying small bits, but none of us is paying enough to get ownership. Copyright makes sure everyone gets a chance to experience art (I’m being generous with Bond here) and not just the very rich.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Nobody here needs you to educate them on the law, we all know what the law is. Our discussion is on whether that law is right or not, based on our world views.
      
      But thank you for contributing. Unlike the copyright maximalists, we here will never try to censor your speech.
    - tetridae
      
      SoundnuoS: The copy is a free commercial for the future work. What still has any value when copies are free – is the future work.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Falkvinge’s article can’t be refuted because there isn’t that much in it to refute. It’s devoid of substance when it comes to the subjects we’ve been discussing i.e. how copyright is used today.”
      
      On the contrary the problem Anon has in refuting Rick’s article – the same problem you are having – is that today copyright is still used as a censorship tool with roughly the same motivation given. Gatekeeper control and censorship as an anti-competitive measure.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “@Anyone
      
      But the original work is not, being copied doesn’t diminish that value.”
      
      That depends on how you define “value”. Copyright maximalists generally turn somersaults trying to prove that up is down and yet not. At the same time.
      
      In any market abiding by capitalistic rules the worth of a copy approaches 0. That’s simple enough.
      
      “Copyright makes sure everyone gets a chance to experience art (I’m being generous with Bond here) and not just the very rich.”
      
      The truth of that may be in doubt but the primary problem with that argument is that we ought to allow a violent and coercive all-encompassing monopoly providing veto rights on everyone else’s physical property because at the end there’s a silver lining?
      
      By the same principles the rape victim should consider herself lucky she was appreciated because many people don’t get to have sex.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      >On the contrary the problem Anon has in refuting Rick’s article – the same problem you are having – is that today copyright is still used as a censorship tool with roughly the same motivation given. Gatekeeper control and censorship as an anti-competitive measure.
      
      The problem with refuting Falkvinge’s article is that it doesn’t show this. He makes a historical analysis showing how copyright at one time has been used as a tool of censorship. Then he leaves it to the reader to assume that this is still happening today.
      Where there should be some sort of conclusion and argument showing how copyright is still used for censorship today, there’s nothing.
      The article insinuates this is the case, but does not show it. It’s good rhetoric, but that’s all.
      
      >providing veto rights on everyone else’s physical property
      
      You keep saying this, but I can’t remember seeing any argument for why this would be the case.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      I really don’t see free speech being censored by copyright in 2013.
      
      free speech was censored by copyright in 2012. It’s in the process of being censored by copyright in 2013 as we speak, by the pressures being put on payment processors of perfectly legal services, in the name of copyright.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      You mean the legal services that enable the mass infringement of copyrighted material? How is this different from any boycott of a service provider or manufacturer engaging in unethical practices?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “>providing veto rights on everyone else’s physical property
      
      You keep saying this, but I can’t remember seeing any argument for why this would be the case.”
      
      Because you are operating under the assumption that a set of information or a pattern can be owned I am not surprised you can’t see an argument.
      
      My problem is that this is as insane an argument as claiming that all rainbows are essentially the same object. Or that because you own a match you by extension own every match in the world recognizable as such.
      
      Copyright does not fit ANY fundamental understanding or definition of “property” without turning the entire concept upside down.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Viewpoints on the problem of ownership made in the other thread.
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “…but without some further analysis of how copyright (supposedly) affects free speech today…”
  
  As in that it practically ensures that communicating online today is subjected to a “guilty-before -proven-innocent” legal paradigm? Because a takedown means the person must prove innocence and not the other way around.
  
  In legal terms this is called reversing the burden of proof and doesn’t require any analysis at all beyond a quick check as to why “burden of proof” remains an essential pillar of any civil or penal law.
  - SoundnuoS
    
    double post
  - SoundnuoS
    
    Kind of how a guard suspecting you of shoplifting can hold you in the store until the police show up? Then you go through things with the police and if the store is wrong you’re let go.
    - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
      
      Under this logic, 300 million people are accused of shoplifting.
      
      Their Privacy is invaded; their honesty questioned; their property is confiscated; their ability to make a living is destroyed; their reputation is impaired; they are subjected to involuntary arrest.
      
      They complain credibly that they have been damaged by these arbitrary and abusive actions; and, that those actions are a violation of their Constututional right to presumption of innocence.
      
      First: How are they wrong?
      
      Second: If it was you, would YOU consider “just being let go” fair compensation?
      
      Third: If it was you, wouldn’t you join those 300 million people in passing different laws?
    - Jimmy671
      
      “”Kind of how a guard suspecting you of shoplifting can hold you in the store until the police show up?”"
      
      If a store guard tried doing this in my country he would find himself arrested by the police,and the store being sued.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monstery & ThumbsUpThumbsDown
      
      About DMCAs: no one has really shown that they are used as a tool of censorship and since counter notices can be made their effect in this regard is very limited.
      One thing to keep in mind is that the internet is a public media. The same rules should apply as when publishing in other public media.
      What you say in your emails should be your own business, but when you publish on Youtube it becomes public.
      
      If it’s about the six-strikes plan I’ll repost this bit that I wrote about Hadopi:
      
      They attempt to solve the burden of proof problem with making everyone responsible for their router. The warnings serve to alert the owner of the router that something is going on.
      The conviction everyone writes about was in fact made with the man’s router.
      
      I’m not 100% content with that solution, but it is admittedly somewhat like holding the owner of a car responsible if he knowingly gives use of his car to someone DUI.
      Maybe it’s time to accept that the internet isn’t necessarily a harmless toy.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      http://www.dmca-censorship.org/
      https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121104/18515020927/dmca-censorship-revenge-porn-site-owner-tries-to-censor-criticism-with-bogus-takedown-notice.shtml
      https://www.torrentfreak.com/dmca-horrors-of-a-broad-and-automated-censorship-tool-120304/
      
      first three links on a duckduckgo search. Your weasel words like “really” do you absolutely no good, when a simple look around on the internet can prove you wrong.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Aside from your argument being completely false that sounds very reasonable.
      
      Here are the problems.
      
      1) Normally, no security guard is allowed to hold you. Only police does. If the store tries, they are open to lawsuits and may be open to actual criminal charges.
      
      2) In order to have anyone detained, in any place, for any reason the judiciary must be called in and decide that indeed, an unlawful act is going on. If the police take an interest and begin investigating, only then are you called upon to defend yourself.
      
      3) The DMCA takedowns would have to be described as a hotel being forced to accept the policy of INSTANTLY evicting ANY customer on ANY complaint made by ANY third party.
      
      After which your argument would have it appear “reasonable” that the evicted person could defend his rights only by falsifying the unfounded claim made by the third party.
      
      A third party which in this case is an automated system which sends takedowns even on works officially placed there by the copyright holder. Such as their own Imdb representation.
      
      So no, SoundnuoS. Do us the courtesy of sanity-checking your argumentations, please. So far they are identical in context to those presented by such known trolls as bobmail and “Anon” – and wrapping the same unpalatable falsehoods in more polite language doesn’t make them easier to digest.
      
      [EDIT]
      
      “About DMCAs: no one has really shown that they are used as a tool of censorship “
      
      The main problem in demonstrating that DMCA’s are used for censorship purposes is because the amount of false takedowns obviously generated by error is too damn large. One only has to look at Google’s published statistics to realize that the system, when it even asks for takedowns of a media company’s own IMDB presentation, must be faulty.
      
      The Megaupload fiasco otoh is a pretty well presented case, along with many others. Enough in itself to demonstrate why the current system is broken beyond repair. Because whether the automated takedown is impossible to whitelist efficiently or the takedown is deliberate, in no way is it acceptable that even ONE legitimately uploaded video is suspended for weeks without compensation paid for the unwarranted block.
      
      If the media companies are acting in good faith here, there is no way in which they could so severely combat attempts at making false claims penalized.
      
      But the media companies aren’t acting in good faith, are they?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “I’m not 100% content with that solution, but it is admittedly somewhat like holding the owner of a car responsible if he knowingly gives use of his car to someone DUI.
      Maybe it’s time to accept that the internet isn’t necessarily a harmless toy.”
      
      No, what you mean to say is that it is somewhat like holding the owner of a car responsible for NOT knowing who used his car when the car is by necessity parked with the engine running, the keys in the ignition and the door open.
      
      You see, what you are in essence saying is that 99.5% of the citizenry should not be allowed to own a wireless router to begin with.
      
      Try again.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      Except no one is being detained here. You’re free to go elsewhere.
      As you pointed out in your other post, the store is private property. Youtube and filelockers are also private property and do not belong to the person doing the uploading.
      If you start growing weed in storages-for-rent, I’m pretty sure you’ll be evicted immediately.
      
      This really is the point here:
      One thing to keep in mind is that the internet is a public media. The same rules should apply as when publishing in other public media.
      What you say in your emails should be your own business, but when you publish on Youtube it becomes public.
      
      Automated algorithms making mistakes hardly qualify as systematic censorship.
      And the mega song situation is inconclusive as there’s online info saying that some of the artists wouldn’t have consented to appearing in the video. In that case the DMCA is justified and the only reason the video is still up is to avoid generating bad pr.
      One song being taken down under unclear circumstances isn’t quite enough to show that DMCAs are being used for systematic censorship.
      
      >You see, what you are in essence saying is that 99.5% of the citizenry should not be allowed to own a wireless router to begin with
      
      No, this isn’t in essence what I’m saying at all. The router isn’t by necessity left wide open. It is password protected. One consequence of this is that using someone’s router without permission or hacking it becomes a more serious game.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Poole
      
      Ironically the dmca-censorship link is dead.
      
      About some of the examples listed:
      
      The innocence of muslims: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/191647/innocence-of-muslims-actress-asks-court-to-remov.html#axzz2Imz0YKxy
      
      Actress gets scared because of the negative response to the film in the muslim world. Claims to have received death threats. So we can see that the threat of death can actually lead to censorship. Claims to have been misled about the nature of the movie she was taking part in. Despite this the movie is still up. No censorship here.
      
      The Drake review is still online. No censorship here.
      
      The forum thread is still there.
      
      Thats the problem with all the arguments claiming DMCAs are censoring things. All the things that are pointed out as being unjustifiably censored are always there when I look.
      
      The only reason the blogger with the four lines took down her article is because she couldn’t be bothered to make a counter claim. That’s hardly censorship.
      
      If this system was being regularly abused to take down legitimate content, shouldn’t we see uncountable successful lawsuits against the makers of the frivolous claims? I tried looking but found almost nothing.
      This seems to point to that it actually isn’t used for censorship.
      
      And if it’s about the possibility of mistakes happening:
      http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40909822/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/texan-declared-innocent-after-years-prison/
      
      Should we give up having jail time for rape because innocent people have been jailed?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “>You see, what you are in essence saying is that 99.5% of the citizenry should not be allowed to own a wireless router to begin with
      
      No, this isn’t in essence what I’m saying at all. The router isn’t by necessity left wide open. It is password protected. One consequence of this is that using someone’s router without permission or hacking it becomes a more serious game.”
      
      Yes, the router is, by necessity, left wide open. There are youtube videos out there today showing you exactly how to crack a protected router in seconds. A ten year old can do it, and anyone with intent certainly will.
      
      Hacking it becomes a more serious game? HOW? No, the person being hacked is, however, in a serious position in any place where the account holder must prove his innocence.
      
      The amount of faith you place in reversed burden of proof both where DMCA takedowns and wifi ownership are concerned is highly disturbing.
      
      “If you start growing weed in storages-for-rent, I’m pretty sure you’ll be evicted immediately.”
      
      If someone tells the landlord you are growing weed in a storage-for-rent I’m pretty sure the landlord insists on you providing proof of this or checks for himself before evicting you. The problem with your metaphor is that the DMCA does this the other way around. Any accusation is considered valid until disputed.
      
      This is what “reversed burden of proof” means.
      
      Do you have any relevant arguments on hand to offer as to why burden of proof should EVER be reversed? Because in context of free speech, a reversed burden of proof abolishes that concept.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      >No, the person being hacked is, however, in a serious position in any place where the account holder must prove his innocence.
      
      That’s what I meant. If there aren’t provisions in the strikes schemes for anyone claiming they are hacked to have that investigated, then there should be. I’m kind of expecting future laws on hacking Wi-fi won’t even need something as bad as this for it to be taken seriously:
      http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/hacking-neighbor-from-hell/
      
      I.e. any country adopting strikes schemes will have to make hacking routers illegal and a more serious offence (if it isn’t already.)
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “That’s what I meant. If there aren’t provisions in the strikes schemes for anyone claiming they are hacked to have that investigated, then there should be. I’m kind of expecting future laws on hacking Wi-fi won’t even need something as bad as this for it to be taken seriously:
      http://www.wired.com/threatlev…
      
      I.e. any country adopting strikes schemes will have to make hacking routers illegal and a more serious offence (if it isn’t already.)”
      
      Investigated how? Unless the person being hacked has the know-how of a system administrator any successful hack will look like no one but the account owner ever accessed the router. Any attempt to verify the reality requires an in-depth physical scan of old log deletions which is quite costly.
      
      So we are right back to where either the plaintiff, the defendant or the tax payer funds a hideously expensive forensive investigation for every case where a hacking has been claimed. Meaning that since innocence is presumed, the claimant has to foot the bill of the investigation in hopes evidence will turn up, or drop the case.
      
      Secondly about taking wireless hacks more seriously – this is like making speeding a capital offense irrespective of whether you drove 5 mph too fast or 100 mph too fast. Normally, you see, the actual risk of someone’s router being hacked is nil. At worst it means – for a wireless router on a good cable – a temporary 5-15% effective bandwidth loss to the one sharing your connection, due to signal dropoff rate.
      
      Are you seriously suggesting the law should be stricter just in order to prop up bad evidence?
      
      And how would this law be implemented where a curious teen had done the experimenting? By bankrupting the parents with no hope of matching their sons IT knowledge or sending one of them to jail as responsible?
      
      Do you even realize, given the arguments you regularly put up, in what sort of horrifying world we would live in, were they to be applied to law?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      The good news is that it seems wifi hacking is already illegal in many places : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_piggybacking
      New laws won’t be needed.
      
      The other bit of good news is that it isn’t necessarily easy to hack wifi: http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/08/wireless-password-easily-cracked/
      
      Some are harder than others. If the router owner is using some of the harder ones, he’ll just have to switch password once he gets the first warning. How many pirates will have the patience to keep hacking for days or months just to download something? Considering that you’ll also have to spend a while online to get something downloaded and you need to be within range of the wifi means there’s an increased chance of getting caught once someone starts looking.
      
      >Any attempt to verify the reality requires an in-depth physical scan of old log deletions which is quite costly.
      
      How costly?
      
      I think we’ll be moving towards more regulation on this, regardless of strikes schemes. There’s a lot of things you can do over the net these days, not all of which are constructive. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_crime
      Like I said, the internet isn’t just a harmless toy and bringer of knowledge.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “How costly?”
      
      Physical in-depth scan of the routers solid state memory. Last time I saw a bill for this it was the equivalent of 7500 €.
      
      “I think we’ll be moving towards more regulation on this, regardless of strikes schemes.”
      
      As SOPA, PIPA and ACTA indicated, we are moving toward LESS regulation.
      
      You see, regulation impedes functionality. We are already at the limit where we either accept that individuals will be able to communicate whatever they wish with whomever they wish unimpeded…or we abolish the internet.
      
      “Like I said, the internet isn’t just a harmless toy and bringer of knowledge.”
      
      I think I know the internet in it’s details to a far greater extent than you do. And whatever you say, and whatever your opinion is on how the internet is used, the only real choice you actually do have is this:
      
      1) An internet where people communicate unhindered.
      
      2) No internet.
      
      Other options do not exist. For the same reason that you can never realistically block people from saying certain words while still allowing them the option to speak.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      I’ll defer to you on the technical details of the internet, but your statement at the end can’t be taken seriously.
      
      They’ve had strikes schemes in France, NZ, and more than that in South Korea. Their net is still up, people are free to communicate and they are free to continue up- and downloading non-copyrighted work.
      
      The only thing being done is that destructive aspects of technology are being regulated, in this case file-sharing of copyrighted material. Functionality is never an end in itself. If something can be done with technology that isn’t desireable it gets controlled.
      
      We have cars that can go 200+kph, but we have speedlimits. Cars are not rendered unfunctional.
      We have guns and they are heavily regulated, but still available for hunting and competitive shooting.
      We have atomic power and that sure is hell is regulated as to who gets to do what with it.
      Every industry has regulations to limit various aspects of their functionality, there’s nothing new here.
- ThumbsUpThumbsDown
  
  How DOES Copyright Law affect free speech?
  
  Fair to say that the above is objectively a question; but, what the preponderance of six billion Human Beings are expressing is that IT is also a problem.
  
  A really BIG problem.
Anonymous

not just the C16, Rik, it’s every century. every time the rich and powerful feel that what they have, what they think they are entitled to, is under threat of being lost, they do whatever they can to change the balance back in their favour. it makes no difference what it is they have to do or say, they will do it. governments are part of that same bunch, that is why whatever is wanted, governments go along with and do whatever they can to help. anyone that thinks that any of those groups will help ‘the people’ rather than ‘their own kind’ is in a fantasy world! anyone that thinks that ‘the people’ will win is also in fantasy land. what is wanted may be slowed, even delayed, but it is never stopped. you can take SOPA as an example. the bill as a whole was stopped, yes, but the sneaky bastards are implementing it one bit at a time, without oversight and without judicial revue and without ‘the people’ questioning. the end result will be all of SOPA introduced, but we just wont know it, until it’s too late, that is! another example is the action taken against those that caused the world financial crisis. countries were put on the brink of bankruptcy and those responsible were, basically, told, ‘naughty boys! dont do it again!’ no jail time and not even much if anything in the way of fines. yet have a web site, with links on that MAY lead to other sites that MAY have copyrighted files on that MAY be available for download and get bankrupted and thrown in jail for 5 years. yep! that sounds fair to me, i dont think!!
ITakeAPotatoChipAndEatIt

“All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.” -BSG
- http://twitter.com/NomadOfNorad NomadOfNorad
  
  That quote unexpectedly appearing here actually made me flinch. Hard.
  
  Funny how a line originally sto— er….. BORROWED from a children’s fantasy could get so deeply under my skin, isn’t it? :D
  
  At least we’re not to the level of mutherfrakking toasters nuking us back into the stone age. (Yet? oO )
  - Guest
    
    Spoilers: Dodd, Biden, and Obama are skinjobs…
- DocGerbil100
  
  “-BSG”
  
  The line appears to be originally written by Michael Taylor, for the episode Razor (although since it’s an important line for the series, it’s possible series writer / showrunner Ron Moore and / or another core writer may have come up with it).
Jannuary54

A very simplistic view of the religious wars.
- ScrewEwe2
  
  it should also be mentioned that the main reason Protestantism came about was Martin Luther’s objections to the Catholic Churches practice of selling indulgences. In other words, selling salvation to the highest bidder. Murder someone, pay the Catholic Church enough money, and you earn a first class ticket to Heaven with all sins forgiven. The translation of the Bible from Latin to German, and then into other languages was secondary to objections regarding the Catholic Churches corrupt practices of the time.
  - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
    
    Rick probably agrees fully in respect to the utterly irrational excessess of institutionalized Cathlocism.
    
    His first valid point, however, is that the Catholic Church’s ability to control Ideas enabled those unjustifyable excessess.
    
    His second valid point is that the Human Destiny of that day hinged on whether or not Ideas would be empowered to flow freely to the disenfranchised.
    
    His third valid point resides in the direct linkage of THAT struggle to overcome institutionalized ownership and control over Ideas to the detriment of Human Beings; and, the challenges that we face today in overcoming the worst effects of a Permanent Corporate Domain in Human Intellectual Property.
    
    Make no mistake: A Perpetual Corporate Domain in all Human Intellectual Property is NOT primarily or exclusively about Profit.
    
    We must think about this twice because everything about our Human experience of SELF teaches us to understand Corporations exclusively in terms of Profit.
    
    Yet, a Perpetual Corporate Domain in Intellectual Property is first and foremost about expressing and entrenching a perfectly Corporate world view over and above all Human institutions as a vehicle for Corporate Profits.
    
    THAT is why our Democratic process has become more driven by sources of Campaign contributions than the merits of issues.
    
    THAT is why our legislators care more about the allocation of pecuniary privileges than about the preservation of Constitutional Rights.
    
    THAT is why our Best Universities produce research that can be monetized over research that merely tells the Truth.
    
    THAT is why our Financial Institutions compensate privileged insiders over individual investors.
    
    That is why our ratings agencies can’t rate.
    
    THAT is why our National Press cares more about Advertising than Journalistic objectivity.
    
    Taken together these various parameters have ONE face: FASCISM.
  - http://twitter.com/Falkvinge Falkvinge
    
    it should also be mentioned that the main reason Protestantism came about was Martin Luther’s objections to the Catholic Churches practice of selling indulgences. In other words, selling salvation to the highest bidder.
    
    This is an excellent example of what a gatekeeper position of knowledge enables. If people had already been able to read the bible in their own language, they would be able to see for themselves just how badly this fit with its message.
    
    Instead, they were forced to rely on the interpretations of the clergy, who re-shaped the message to serve their own needs (i.e., money).
    
    This is a perfect example of information wars. It is also a perfect example of moral corruption, so it is little wonder that Luther objected.
    
    Cheers,
    Rick
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “The translation of the Bible from Latin to German, and then into other languages was secondary to objections regarding the Catholic Churches corrupt practices of the time.”
    
    No, not really. You see, when everyone could read the bible, everyone could also see that there were NO provisions written into the bible of selling indulgences to wealthy people or a dictate that allowed the colleague of cardinals to possess their own private brothel.
    
    When the only ones protesting the lavish indulgences enjoyed by high church officials were secluded erudite monks with little to no political influence it was different. A lay brother could if need be be silenced with an imposed oath of silence given him by the local parish pastor.
- ThumbsUpThumbsDown
  
  If even a small minority of our legislators understood the sumplest version of this “simplistic view”, we wouldn’t have the existing Copyright regime.
Slsle

Imagine where we could be if we all understood this

no usury on currency creation
no government shall ever borrow
iamslattery
- Mary Hinge
  
  i didn’t even undersand what you said. imagine that.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    He was referencing 16th century religious rules on the handling of money.
Che Dot Com

Bravo Rick, come the revolution you are definately not going to be one of the first against the wall.
- http://twitter.com/Falkvinge Falkvinge
  
  The question is more whether I’d survive to that point. :) Before the citizens get violent, the government ratches up violence in steps until the system breaks. I might not be in the citizens’ crosshairs, but I’m not exactly popular with defenders of the status quo.
  
  I do hope we don’t get there, but I’m prepared for the contingency.
Harquebus

http://torrentfreak.com/nothing-new-under-the-copyright-eclipsed-sun-110218/
Who

“People in power have always tried to prevent the common folk from obtaining knowledge that threatens their power. This happened in the 16th century, and it is happening now”

it really depends on were you live and how you really look at it….the problem is not any ones power to control the information, its the “ABUSE OF” this power that’s the problem.

for example….the definition of copyright= right to copy.
now depending one what your countries LAW’s say the definition of this will have allowances and restrictions for both the holder and the user. currently in say the US, copyright holders are defiantly ABUSING there rights to copyright. we got holders calming shit they don’t own and calming UNLAWFUL infringements on others.

this IS going to continue till ether 1 the PEOPLE decide to get correctly educated and DO something about it, or 2 the government steps in and says enough, this is what the law says.
bobmail

Rick, this is perhaps the most classic case of bullshit I have ever seen.

“People in power have always tried to prevent the common folk from obtaining knowledge that threatens their power. This happened in the 16th century, and it is happening now”

As soon as you start here, you know you are pretty much fucked, because you are trying to justify piracy as a way to avoid state secrets. Yet, copyright has nothing to do with state secrets. So right away, you are fucked.

Further, the very nature of copyright, the “risk / reward” mechanisms make it only work when you do in fact distribute your work. Making your work unavailable is a zero sum game where you efforts are for naught, because nobody sees them. Copyright encourages distribution, because in part is provides a path towards income, something almost every artist wants and needs.

Your lines of thinking here are so confused. It’s very difficult to take you seriously, when you honestly think that your support for trashing the copyright system is akin to the religious crusades. I’m waiting for you to finally blow yourself out using the Nazis and the death camps. That would be your career death sentence.
- icec0ld
  
  “Rick, this is perhaps the most classic case of bullshit I have ever seen.”
  
  Oh? Lets settle in a classic case of Bobmail misinterpretation and see the laughs he has in store for us
  
  “As soon as you start here, you know you are pretty much fucked, because you are trying to justify piracy as a way to avoid state secrets. Yet, copyright has nothing to do with state secrets. So right away, you are fucked”
  
  Religion back in the day of the 16th century was never about state secrets. Everyone knew god, and the bible existed but the churches that existed wanted to continue to justify their existence as the sole channel through which the christian masses could worship god and learn about his works and the bible. They wanted to continue to be that sole channel and maintain the incredible economic hold they had all over Europe.
  
  The Term “State secret” isn’t even mentioned in the article because you have brought up a point that doesn’t exist in this article.
  
  “Further, the very nature of copyright, the “risk / reward” mechanisms make it only work when you do in fact distribute your work.”
  
  This is some right jibberish. Copyright has very little to do Risk/Reward “mechanisms”. Do expand further on this for I have no fucking clue what you are talking about.
  
  “Making your work unavailable is a zero sum game where you efforts are for naught, because nobody sees them. Copyright encourages distribution, because in part is provides a path towards income, something almost every artist wants and needs.”
  
  The opposite. Copyright is actually about reducing the availability of work in order increase it’s potential value. In fact nothing about copyright can do anything but that. The fact that you want to stop people from “making their own” and therefore cutting you out means that you are wanting to reduce the level of distribution and limit it to only the ones you produce.
  
  Making your work unavailable is a losing game. An artists greatest enemy is awareness and all studies have told us, the more they are “pirated” the more money they tend to make because of sheer awareness.
  
  “Your lines of thinking here are so confused. It’s very difficult to take you seriously”
  
  Your lines of thinking here are so confused. It’s very difficult to take you seriously.
  
  “when you honestly think that your support for trashing the copyright system is akin to the religious crusades. I’m waiting for you to finally blow yourself out using the Nazis and the death camps. That would be your career death sentence.”
  
  When you rag on religious history as being a morally bankrupt comparison, it doesn’t exactly make the best sense to throw in a holocaust wish right after that.
  - Ray
    
    How much do they pay you?… Nobodies going to spill that much crap unless your getting paid. Your not changing anyone’s mind here chief.. I think your missing the point…(On purpose)
    - icec0ld
      
      Zero? If I actually got paid I’d write more than a handful of words. Why? Got a better offer?
      
      I don’t actually care about anyone’s opinion beyond my own. Form it and tell me and I’ll show ya what I disagree with in it.
      
      The only point Bob makes, is that he is completely making things up or completely misunderstands or misrepresents what copyright is and it’s actual effects, as well shoving words down peoples throats on a regular basis to form incomprehensible arguments with them.
- Guest
  
  @bobfail
  
  “As soon as you start here, you know you are pretty much fucked, because you are trying to justify piracy”
  
  As soon as you start here, you know you’re pretty much fucked, because it’s obvious to anybody who read Rick’s article(particularly where it says“The quest for the net’s liberty is not a fight for some silly right to download free music.”) that you’re lying
  
  “Making your work unavailable is a zero sum game”
  
  Rick didn’t suggest making making one’s work unavailable(he’s actually suggesting the polar opposite…), so that’s another lie.
  
  “Copyright encourages distribution”
  
  Nope, it discourages it by placing restrictions on it.
  
  “because in part is provides a path towards income”
  
  It provides a path towards having your income stolen by whatever gang of *IAA thugs you sign your copyright away to. As has been proven over and over again, copyright is in no way necessary for artists to make money. It’s necessary for the COPYRIGHT MONOPOLY to make money, on the other hand, which is why they lie so furiously that it’s necessary for the creation of anything at all.
  
  “when you honestly think that your support for trashing the copyright system is akin to the religious crusades. “
  
  Rick’s drawing a parallel between the censorship of the printing press with the censorship of the internet, and he’s saying both happened for the same reason: jealous gatekeeps are fearful of losing their power to control information.
  
  Resisting the jealous gatekeepers of today, then, is similar to resisting the jealous gatekeepers of yestersay.
  
  You may not like the comparison, but that doesn’t make it invalid.
  
  “I’m waiting for you to finally blow yourself out using the Nazis”
  
  Well, the propaganda produced by the MAFIAA and the propaganda produced by the Nazis are different in content but almost identical in technique.
  
  You shouldn’t be inviting comparisons.
- Anyone
  
  funny you should mention Nazis
  
  the GEMA (local german MAFIAA) was founded by the Nazis, as a way to keep the art “pure” and “aryan”
  
  it still exists to this day, and currently is censoring ALL music from youtube, harassing small bars or kindergartens, etc.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    And Ifpi was founded by Mussolini. Astonishing to see how many copyright enforcement organizations were founded under totalitarian rule.
- UraPhake
  
  Here are some things you should read — pay particular attention to the last one relating to your statement, “…when you honestly think that your support for trashing the copyright system is akin to the religious crusades.”
  
  Copyright As Censorship:
  
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121005/08405820620/copyright-as-censorship-author-removes-blog-post-after-being-threatened-quoting-4-sentences.shtml
  
  https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/00222620398/anyone-who-says-copyright-cannot-be-used-censorship-has-no-credibility.shtml
  
  http://torrentfreak.com/abusing-copyright-to-stifle-dissent-censor-critics_120715/
  
  http://rootstrike.com/3
  
  http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1378&context=californialawreview&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Ddoes%2520copyright%2520censor%253F%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D10%26cad%3Drja%26ved%3D0CGEQFjAJ%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fscholarship.law.berkeley.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D1378%2526context%253Dcalifornialawreview%26ei%3De8X8UKC7BsTkqAH1rIDABQ%26usg%3DAFQjCNGJp7KOga9JOKCujlPXb0qm7rxcCQ%26bvm%3Dbv.41248874%2Cd.aWc#search=%22does%20copyright%20censor%3F%22
  
  …and many, many more.
- http://twitter.com/Falkvinge Falkvinge
  
  It’s very difficult to take you seriously, when you honestly think that your support for trashing the copyright system is akin to the religious crusades
  
  The wars. The religious wars, ca 1500-1700. You’re confusing two centuries of war within Europe with when Europe went all righteous on its eastern neighbors in 1100-1400, which is known as the crusades.
  
  They are two entirely different events in history.
  
  Cheers,
  Rick
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  As usual, bobmail, you come out swinging at a straw man because you simply can’t refute what Rick actually said.
  
  “As soon as you start here, you know you are pretty much fucked, because you are trying to justify piracy as a way to avoid state secrets. Yet, copyright has nothing to do with state secrets. So right away, you are fucked.”
  
  STATE SECRETS?
  
  Rick said nothing of the sort. “Copyright” was first invented as a means of censoring information which religious people felt was inconvenient.
  And after that charter expired the very wealthy guild of printers found a convenient way of converting the politcal censorship tool into a private one.
  
  “Further, the very nature of copyright, the “risk / reward” mechanisms make it only work when you do in fact distribute your work. Making your work unavailable is a zero sum game where you efforts are for naught, because nobody sees them. Copyright encourages distribution, because in part is provides a path towards income, something almost every artist wants and needs.”
  
  And here we can see you quoting, almost verbatim, the same argument made by the guild of printers in England. Conveniently forgetting that the rest of the continent where the printing press did not suffer the same rules, was thriving and producing culture without problems at all.
  
  What I find most offensive about your abusive drivel is that Rick did not invent the core of this argument. The one closest to home expressing the same ideas for your part was Thomas Jeffersson.
  
  I’m assuming you are having similar problems taking that worthy seriously then?
  
  Your entire refutal can be summed up thusly: “I have nothing to refute Rick with, therefore I will marginalize and use strong language in the hopes the facts will go away”.
Nn

Funny part is latin wasn’t the original language of the Bible so essentially they got mad other people using a translated version when they themselves were using a translated version. The irony..
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  Certainly. The “authorized version” was put together from many sources and the gist of the old testament should have been in ancient arameic, for instance.
  
  And when you compare the ancient texts to current scripture you start spotting translation errors – such as “young girl” being translated as “virgin”, “poisoner” for “witch”, and so on.
Nn

Blah didnt finish my train of thought.. As with modern copyright monopoly the very people pushing it were the very people who stole other peoples idea to make their products.. Hypocrisy is as old as time especially with those who deem themselves higher than than rest of society
Anon

Rick is way out of line with the American public:

From Ars, today:
“But only a small minority of Americans—between four and 15 percent—say it’s reasonable to upload copyrighted content for public consumption, post links to pirated content on Facebook, or sell unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials.”

That averages to even less than 10%.

Better get used to it. To the creator or rightsholder go the spoils because that is what feels right to the huge majority. Now let’s see what the world has to say. Rick’s been huffing up the helium again.
- Anyone
  
  that’s because most people don’t know or understand what harm the copyright monopoly does
  they need to be educated, once they understand the system they will disagree with it
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    The various *IAA organizations are busy bringing copyright in head-long collission with said US public.
    
    I am eagerly awaiting the six-strikes regime to bring awareness into every US home.
- BuddhaFacePalmed
  
  Anon is way out of line with the American public:
  
  “But only a small minority of Americans—between four and 15 percent—say it’s reasonable to upload copyrighted content for public consumption, post links to pirated content on Facebook, or sell unauthorized copies of copyrighted materials.”
  
  What you left out was that 87% of those Americans aged between 18-29 agreed it is reasonable to share between family members and 76% to share among friends. Unfortunately, MAFIAA doesn’t make the distinction between family, friends, and total random strangers when it comes to filesharing.
  
  That averages out to moar than 80% of the American youth.
  
  Better get used to it. To the youth goes the spoils because that is what feels right to the huge majority. Now lets see what the rest of the world has to say.
  Anon’s been huffing up the helium again
  
  SOURCE: http://torrentfreak.com/study-maps-the-emerging-ethics-of-file-sharing-and-enforcement-130115/
  - Anyone
    
    that means that 13% are egoistic assholes
    sounds about right ;)
    - tetridae
      
      You mean there are 13% working in the copyright-industries? That’s a lot! No wonder your economy is stagnating.
- icec0ld
  
  “The quest for the net’s liberty is not a fight for some silly right to download free music. It is much larger than that: it breaks a hegemony that has stood for millennia.”
  
  Anon. Unable to demonstrate his reading comprehension since 2013
- ThumbsUpThumbsDown
  
  What percentage of those people say a perpetual Corporate Domain in Intellectual Property is a sane or equitable social or economic policy?
  
  You do see that a hell of a lot of people are voting with their mouses…..
  
  Have you noticed that a lot of them seem to be Appellate Court Judges?
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    I beg to differ, Thumbs.
    
    Appellate judges vote with their gavels.
    
    Not that this spells things out any better for Anon.
    - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
      
      I stand (or sit) corrected….. (lol)
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “”But only a small minority of Americans—between four and 15 percent…”
  
  You realize that this is the same approximate amount of people which were in opposition to the apartheid regime of south africa and in opposition to the southern race laws in the 50′s?
  
  Initially.
  
  As public awareness spreads of what copyright actually demands in restrictions, that number tends to swing dramatically. Hence the upsurge in politically active pirates in various places in europe every time a new copyright regime is implemented. We can thank the actions of GEMA for a lot when it came to helping the German Pirate Party achieve a familiarity which now has it at roughly 7-10% of the political landscape.
  
  And speaking of politics in the EU as soon as any pirate party member came into the parliament, the entire green group, third largest of the voting blocks, adopted the pirate platform in full.
  
  So how is that denial working for you, Baghdad Bob? Heavily assisted by medication I assume?
- tetridae
  
  Well I guess it started at 0 and as younger generations grow up pirate copying will be as justified a hobby as home-cooking and home-baking, fixing your own car, computer et.c. is today. You don’t hear those businesses demand that people should be persecuted for hobbies, even though the restaurants in my city can justly claim to lose sales if I’m allowed to cook my own food.
  
  This is a basic question of freedom v.s. establised businesses “rights” to make money in their favourite way.
guest

the only intellectual property anyone can truly own is what they keep to themselves
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  ” It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors.
  
  It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it.
  
  Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
  
  Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.
  
  Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.
  
  Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.
  
  Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.”
  
  Thomas Jeffersson, 1813.
  
  Of course, according to Anon and Bobmail, that’s just the drink talking. At least if someone who they can actually try to marginalize and discredit, actually quotes this man.
  - SoundnuoS
    
    >Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
    
    So we should give up property rights altogether? That would be the logical consequence here.
    
    I’ll expand on this a bit:
    
    What Jefferson has correctly identified is that our property laws are a construct of society. (Gosh! Shouts of disbelief and amazement!)
    From there however he jumps on to state that inventions would somehow be less entitled to rights of property than other things.
    
    This is actually a completely arbitrary judgement.
    
    You can just as well argue that no one should have the right to own land. It wasn’t made by the owner, it was there before him and it will be there when he dies. He has had no part in making sure it exists, why should he own it?
    
    An invention (or work of art) on the other hand wouldn’t exist without it’s creator. He thought of it and made it himself or had it made. Hard to think of anything more worthy of property rights.
    
    Imo Jefferson confuses the invention with the idea. An idea is indeed something that belongs to everyone as soon as it is expressed. The implementation of an idea (an invention or a work of art) is something that’s made by an individual (or a group of individuals). The same idea can be expressed through many different implementations.
    We have property rights for the implementation, not the idea itself.
    
    There’s nothing more “natural” about owning land or a chair or whatever than there is about owning the implementation of an idea. All property rights are social constructs. No reason why we should give up one while keeping the other.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “Imo Jefferson confuses the invention with the idea. An idea is indeed something that belongs to everyone as soon as it is expressed. The implementation of an idea (an invention or a work of art) is something that’s made by an individual (or a group of individuals). The same idea can be expressed through many different implementations.”
      
      Confused?
      
      Jeffersson was a lawyer and by any accounts also a multi-talented genius.
      
      “As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured.”
      
      I think I’ll have to accept Jeffersson’s view on what constitutes an invention, an idea, or a method over yours. Or you can read through his letter and discover that he actually very methodically explains the differences himself. And is, judging by the contents of the letter VERY aware of the issues.
      
      And it’s remarkable how very many expert economists and lawyers you in essence are, according to you “confusing things”.
      
      What next? Proving that Hawking is fudging his numbers based on you having an opinion about the matter? It isn’t like Jeffersson is exactly alone in doubting the basis of intellectual property.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      I’m sorry if I’ve offended one of your deities, but I’m not going to accept any argument based on some perceived authority.
      
      Is there any more than what you posted? Because in your quote Jefferson clearly states ALL property rights are a social construct.
      
      My argument shows where he, imo, goes wrong and makes an arbitrary choice. Please point out the flaws in my argument, just pointing out that Jefferson was a member of a patent board makes no difference here. Imo he mentions both ideas and inventions, but seems to use them as synonyms.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “…but I’m not going to accept any argument based on some perceived authority”.
      
      Nor am I – just providing the argument which has not, since his time, changed. It’s not my fault that you were unable to read it. Blame your english teacher.
      
      “Is there any more than what you posted? Because in your quote Jefferson clearly states ALL property rights are a social construct.”
      
      Yes, and states what makes information so dubious to view as property, backing up his argument:
      
      “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
      
      Then comes around with the argument we filesharers recognize well.
      
      “Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”
      
      He’s going pretty far in describing exactly what he means: Information with context.
      
      “Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. “
      
      Copyright.
      
      Now, let me ask you a question, SoundnuoS. Is it that you are unable to read english well or was your argument nothing more than a semantic shell game to begin with?
      
      For all your smooth and reasoned tone what strikes me is just how often you present a response so intellectually flawed we might as well have been debating some troll of the “bobmail” or “Anon”-type.
      For example, It’s thunderingly clear exactly what Jeffersson wrote and your question to something already answered in redundance can only be described as dishonest.
      
      In background of how you tried to redefine english words and uses in trying to make article 27 of the UN human rights say something it does not we find another example.
      
      And when you argue for the reversal of burden of proof prevalent in the DMCA takedowns you are in fact arguing that no one should be able to say anything without proving their right to say it.
      
      All of which so far points to an inescapable conclusion – you aren’t even trying to debate rationally anymore than Anon is.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      Ok, maybe my counterargument wasn’t clear enough.
      
      “If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea,…”
      
      Jefferson is still thinking in terms of “natural” rights, despite having realised that there is no such thing. All property rights are a construct of society, no property right is more “natural” than any other.
      
      He tries to motivate it with the next bit:
      
      “…which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.”
      
      And this is where he, imo, goes wrong and confuses the idea with the invention.
      To use an example from Jefferson’s time: If you see a steam train rolling along the tracks you’re immediately struck by the idea: “Brilliant! A cart that moves itself over the tracks!” Now you have the idea and can’t indeed disposess yourself of it.
      This doesn’t mean you can do anything with it. You have no idea how to build a steam engine. This is the invention, that’s the bit that can be patented, and how to make that invention is not obvious from looking at it. At minimum you’d have to take it apart to see how it’s built, and even then it’s quite possible you’ll get something wrong.
      This becomes even more obvious with complex inventions based on other inventions.
      The idea of a smartphone is fairly obvious once you get one in your hands. But you can show someone the complete blueprints for everything and they’ll still have no idea how to build and program it unless they have the education needed to understand them.
      The idea is not the invention. Inventions are implementations of ideas. Implementations can be patented but the idea itself can’t be.
      
      The same is true of musical works and movies
      If you’re a skilled musician with a trained ear you might be able to hear when listening that Giant Steps is based on an idea of keycenters moving in major thirds. You’d probably be able to figure out the main melody fairly quickly but transcribing the solo and the rest of the parts could take you weeks or months.
      The casual listener will hear some guy blowing a horn over some drums, bass and piano. They’ll have no idea how to make it even though the idea (keycenters in major thirds) is right in front of them.
      Again, it’s not the idea that’s copyrightable, but John Coltrane’s implementation of it.
      
      The same with movies. Seeing one doesn’t mean you can make one.
      
      Jefferson’s next bit is also wrong from a purely commercial pov (if we substitute invention or copyrighted work for idea):
      
      “Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.”
      
      If I know how to make something and you dont, yet it’s something you want, then I can sell it to you. If I give it to you for free, then I’m generous, but have lost a chance to make money.
      If you take it without even asking…Well you see where I’m going.
      
      The rest of that part is the ideal. (Where he still seems to find the need to mix in the concept of “natural”) It’s nice and good if ideas flow freely around the globe. None of that however makes any argument for why intellectual property would be less “valid” as a property right.
      We can just as well argue that food (which is a basic condition for survival) should be free and no one should be able to claim property rights on that. In fact it’s fairly easy to argue that it would be immoral to deny food to anyone starving.
      
      In other words, all property rights (intellectual or not) are equal. No point giving up one and keeping the others.
      
      Re: UN 27. I’m very strongly of the opinion that you are the one trying to make it say something it’s not. Your interpretetation needs to remove a clause to be valid.
      Did you read the post where I’m comparing the swedish, finnish, and french versions of it?
      The words which would mean “for free” in those languages just aren’t in it.
      
      (DMCA in the DMCA threads, no point writing the same things all over)
- SoundnuoS
  
  @Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  >Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.
  
  So we should give up property rights altogether? That would be the logical consequence here.
  - Anyone
    
    copyright laws are in conflict with property laws
    to keep property laws we have to abolish copyright
    - SoundnuoS
      
      Read quote, think again.
    - Anyone
      
      I understand the quote and your logical fallacy
      property laws are granted by the state (or society), as are copyright laws.
      however copyright laws restrict property laws, that’s why it needs to be abolished
      property is much more important than copyright
    - SoundnuoS
      
      Paying 9.99 or so for an album doesn’t give you property rights to the content. It’s not even enough to remotely cover costs of production. This is even more so if you never paid for the content in the first place.
      There’s no conflict with property rights.
    - http://gene-poole.tumblr.com Gene Poole
      
      Their inability to produce for a reasonable price has no bearing on my right to own property.
      
      By your argument I can say: fine, why can’t they offer a product for ownership that covers cost of production, like the rest of the world does? I’m sure it doesn’t cost IKEA only 6 dollars per shelf unit, but when I buy a shelf from IKEA, I own it and can do whatever I want with it.
      
      And, no, I don’t buy the mass production bullshit, because the same applies for the record studios churning out bubblegum bullshit so fast it gives Rebecca Black an embolism.
      
      This is to say nothing of the creative hollywood accounting that tears apart your argument from the get go. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe “their” numbers, saying that it’s such a high production cost, when an artist can sell a million copies of an album and still end up owing them 500 grand.
    - Anyone
      
      I bought the plastic disc, it is now my property
      why can’t I do with my property what I want to do?
      
      or to look at it from another perspective
      I bought my computer and my harddrive. why can’t I store a certain bit-sequence on my property?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Anyone
      
      The plastic disc is yours, use it as you wish. The content is not.
      
      Store any bit-sequence you like. If it’s copyrighted however, and you haven’t payed a very sizeable sum for it then you have no right to share it.
      
      That’s how copyrighted stuff works.
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “The plastic disc is yours, use it as you wish. The content is not.”
      
      The plastic disc contains silver backing which is punctured at certain intervals. There is no “content” to own. Only a physical disk containing small laser-burned holes.
      
      When inserted into a certain machine, a laser beam played over those holes will generate data which can be expressed as sound.
      
      At no point is there anything other to own than the plastic disk itself.
      
      That you insist there is simply means you are taking a stroll into Anon’s la-la land fishing for an argument to back up your assumed conclusion with.
      
      If you own the plastic disk you can do with it as you wish. If you can not do with it as you wish then that means it isn’t your property.
      
      There are nobel prize winners who have come to the conclusion that “Intellectual Property” isn’t a property right but a state-sponsored privilege trespassing on everyone else’s property rights. Copyright is even defined as such.
      
      I can’t be sure for which time around you’ve been trying to find an angle to give you the desired-for outcome but it’s quite clear common sense, logic and reason aren’t going to provide you ammunition.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      In other words, there are no such things as literary works, musical compositions or movies.
      For someone who calls for common sense, you’re asking an awful lot here.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Gene Pool
      
      Because in the case of the latest Bond movie that would mean paying around 200 million dollars. Hardly something the average movie fan would like to pay, don’t you agree?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      @SoundnuoS
      
      “In other words, there are no such things as literary works, musical compositions or movies.
      For someone who calls for common sense, you’re asking an awful lot here.”
      
      Oh, a set of notes certainly exists. A movie, well, that’s a reel of film or a plastic disc in a case.
      
      What you refer to is our perception of a certain sensation that a set of notes constitutes a symphony, and that moving images constitute a representation of a real-life reenactment. Said sensation can occur if you run a laser over the burned grooves in a CD, for instance, meaning that from your physical object handled in a certain way by another physical object, you receive sensory input best described as an experience.
      
      Objectively speaking, then, you can still describe a CD, or any other real construct of matter or energy. You can certainly describe a literary work as in the context of a “book”.
      Said book is a physical object owned by someone. “Content” is an inappropriate misnomer as it simply describes matter patterns which when deciphered in one certain waves convey information.
      
      By your definition as soon as something evokes a certain, highly subjective response depending on the one who partakes of the information, said pattern then turns into an “object” with attributes so strange it makes quantum entanglement look normal. And must be treated as such.
      
      If someone were to read aloud a book to me, I retained that information and then repeated the information to someone else, I have just generated a very troubling case as far as the concept of “Intellectual Property” goes.
      
      Because what IP assumes is that someone can force me to accept property against my will and must then be a custodian of that “property” according to rules set by someone with whom I have never met or done business.
      
      If information is property then the above must be true and thought control is a fact. If information is not property then copyright is a wholly artificial privilege with no rational basis of existence.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      @Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      >you receive sensory input best described as an experience.
      
      Exactly. What you’re paying for isn’t the medium, you’re paying to get an experience.
      
      The medium’s only job is to be the means to provide you with the experience. Without the experience the medium is worthless.
      
      That it’s a subjective experience doesn’t matter. Without the original creator of the material on the medium that experience would not be existing.
      
      The only way to distribute the material giving anyone the experience is on some kind of medium (cd, vinyl, cassette, file etc.) in the form of copies.
      
      Because these experiences are considered of some value by people, society has decided that the creator should have the right to charge for those copies.
      Hence copyright.
      
      Anyone who interprets my post about the nature of creative works as making them into an “object” has misunderstood.
      I was trying to point out the above and argue for that it doesn’t matter how many times they are copied and to what format.
      Every copy can provide the same experience. Being copied does not “dilute” that value.
      
      >Because what IP assumes is that someone can force me to accept property against my will and must then be a custodian of that “property” according to rules set by someone with whom I have never met or done business.
      
      This is not what IP assumes at all. IP is saying that if you DO want to have the experience and go out of your way to get it by downloading for instance, then you should pay for it.
      
      Technically your example of someone reading a book to you, and you later retelling it word for word (unlikely, but ok) to a third person could be seen as copyright infringment (I’d say fair use, but for the sake of argument). In this case the infringement happens when the book is read to you, or when you retell it, not because you remember it. Thought control doesn’t enter the picture here.
  - ThumbsUpThumbsDown
    
    No sir! Both Stable ownership AND social law are the gift of either a powerful sword OR fair reasoning.
    
    In a Democracy the plurality of Citizens own both the Swordsman and the Judge.
    
    Which One did you think you own?
    - SoundnuoS
      
      Hmm, I seem to have replied to the wrong post. The quote about Stable ownership is from Scary_Devil_Monastery’s Thomas Jefferson post.
      I’ll put the same reply to his post and expand on it, so it gets placed in context.
  - Scary_Devil_Monastery
    
    “So we should give up property rights altogether? That would be the logical consequence here.”
    
    Did you read common english?
    
    “Intellectual Property” is one giant misnomer – a hoax – as it assumes a privilege of interfering with every other person’s actual property rights.
    
    If “intellectual property” exists, physical property rights do not. It’s that simple.
    - SoundnuoS
      
      You say this a lot, but how do you motivate that statement?
    - Scary_Devil_Monastery
      
      “You say this a lot, but how do you motivate that statement?”
      
      See my reply above. Both the one where I encourage you to actually read what Jeffersson says about the defining factors of property.
      
      And the one where I posit the argument that intellectual property, subjected to any of the rules of ordinary property, equates thought control.
GreenPirate

Don’t bother arguing with the Copycayunes who are still saying the same thing today that they thought to be true in 1984. They are not invited to the discussion about how to create a better future.
- DocGerbil100
  
  Umm… is it just the way it displays on my browser, or do you have the most ridiculously giant-sized avatar on Disqus? :P
  - Whatever
    
    Is it just me or….
    
    It is big for everyone.
    
    :-)
    - Anyone
      
      that’s what she said
  - GreenPirate
    
    Looks as thought somebody fixed whatever bug was causing this. Suddently I don’t feel as god-like. :(
- Jimmy671
  
  Wish I had one that BIG,sure would put a smile on my wife’s face.
Larris

“Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.” -Sid Meier’s Alpha Centuri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iY57ErBkFFE
Guest

In relation with this article I recommend you to watch “Steal This Film II”.

0FF9CD4F43F5DF2A30C694C87E63978AF26EE9D4
Guest

FLAGGED
http://nejtillpirater.wordpress.com/ Nejtillpirater

“Yes, that means that you can view today’s copyright monopoly wars as a logical continuation of the 16th century religious wars.”

No you can’t. Recorded music and movies are products, the information perspective is irrelevant if not discussing distribution and storage. It’s like money, it has a certain value to the owner, how money is distributed or stored has nothing to do with that value.

Rick Falkvinge keeps on repeating the same false arguments forever and he’s not very successful, to say the least. According to the january poll from Sifo, answering the question “On what party would you vote if there would be national elections in Sweden today?”, the “others” category only got 0.4% of the votes. That category contains the Swedish Pirate Party and other small parties like The Donald Duck Party etc. The Swedish Pirate Party is more or less exterminated, by reality.
- Anyone
  
  digital copies of songs or movies are worthless
  there is no way around that fact
- Guest
  
  Nej, keep banging your head into the wall. :D
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “Recorded music and movies are products, the information perspective is irrelevant if not discussing distribution and storage. It’s like money, it has a certain value to the owner, how money is distributed or stored has nothing to do with that value.”
  
  Your argument doesn not make sense until the day when we can pay our rents with Justin Bieber CD’s. Music is not a currency, you see, and until that point although the creation of music may be considered a service the produced music is nothing more than information.
  
  And a copy of that information is simply a copy of that information. Nothing more.
  
  Meaning the information perspective is the only really relevant one.
  
  Are you getting paid in copies of media files by any chance, and this is why you are so desperate to overturn causal reality and common sense?
Mega Norris

Who Gives A Fuck.
still kicking

I love history and enjoyed this article very much. Its basic idea of what power is all about rings true for all times. Interestingly enough, and sure to upset certain people on this board, is the fact that Jesus was executed by the Romans who were acting upon the local church authorities who really ran things in the immediate areas. They were Semites, what later evolved into Judaism, and were seriously pissed off at this guy outside of their churches telling people you didn’t need to pay some shyster to be saved. There is no money in letting this kind of information spread and, remember, back then there were very few opportunities to rise to the top. Hence, kill the guy because he is taking “customers’ away. Centuries later the exact same thing took place when Martin Luther told the dominate Catholic Church to **ck off with their selling of pardons and that an individual could deal directly with God. You didn’t need to buy a new CD for each application when you could do a direct link to the head of creation.

Money, power, and greed. And if you look closely at who controls most of the media companies, the CEOs, the CFOs, etc. and who is receiving millions of dollars a year, sometimes tens of millions, while doing everything possible to stop the ending of their monopoly, darned if you don’t find some of the exact same social, economic and religious groups involved with their same cultural affinity towards greed and deceit. And just like several thousand years ago they hire the government to get rid of anyone who threatens their position. Nothing changes.
Yuri de Groot

I’ve always believed that “religious” wars are seldom about beliefs, but rather about control.
robthom

“”Protestantism and it differed from Catholicism in one crucial aspect: It printed bibles in people’s own languages.”

So protestants distributing bibles another translation removed from the original text was their contribution to Christianity

“The power to interpret the bible from Latin had been shattered, ruined, destroyed…”

Because protestants are too stupid to learn Latin?

And I’m sure that made for a conveniently translated text.

But thanks for your vitriolic self-aborbed attack on the original Christians,
it helps the whole world get along much better.
- Scary_Devil_Monastery
  
  “Because protestants are too stupid to learn Latin?”
  
  No, because no one taught latin outside of the church. Unless you were in holy orders you simply wouldn’t know the language to begin with.
  
  That made every interpretation of the bible one which corresponded to the view of the established church. And no one else.
  
  What the protestants added was the ability for every man who could read to notice that many churchmen were lying through their teeth as the bible did not give sanction anywhere for selling indulgences or for holy orders to establish private brothels.
  
  When that information monopoly was broken, so was the back of the catholic church. Once the fallout had settled we see a radically different christianity emerge. One where everyone can read scripture themselves.
Chilly8

This is something very much like when Britain passed the Marine Offences Act to outlaw broadcasting from ships anchored outside of British waters. A few members of Parliament were terrfied of them, becuase anyone with a radio transmitter could broadcast anything they wanted, outside the regulatory authority of Ofcom, and that just terrified the Establishment.
RichardCranium

Good work. Keep the truth flowing.
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Cris Alvarez

Good essay but I disagree that the religious wars were wars between the elite and the masses. Many (most probably) of the noblemen who embraced the new language and new interpretations were simply trying to wrest financial control of church lands for themselves. I suppose the wars resulted in the redistribution of wealth but I doubt many of the protestant nobles were looking to help out the masses with their wars.
Hiro Protagonist

I think eBook
collections and audiobook collections are much less likely than movies
and pop music to activate enforcement, but this is just the beginning. I think it is shame that all file
sharing is linked together, it gives them an excuse. There is a lot of media that would be
unavailable without file sharing websites. Not Just for free but at all.
Media that has to do with understanding science, survival, real
information about what is happening in the world. A lot educational
material in my view should be available regardless of whether a person
can afford it. People who can afford usually just buy it. To enrich
society some things must be tolerated. I could give a fart about movies
and pop music being restricted, but when demonoid went down I lost rare
audiobook eBooks and research materials. all because the greedy rich.. This New Orld ORder SUcks.
Obviously our supposedly capitalist system is a failure. All money is
only created by fiat from private bankers who lend it to govt’s and
thier “friends” so they get the most buying power out of it, then it
trickles down to us and when we deposit it in the bank(the elite
families), the bank can create more money from nothing and lend it out
with interest. The problem money must be lent before it exists, but they
always charge interest( for what, entering numbers on a screen. now ,
too much money has been created to stay ahead of the interest on the
debt, but it is a shell game. already the world wide debt owed is not
only many of times the money supply, it would take the entire planets
gross domestic product for 200 years to pay off what is owed to the
global elite, who have done nothing to deserve these payments except
quietly set up central banks everywhere, using thier ability to create
money to trade it for REAL GOODS, REAL PROPERTY, and REAL INFLUENCE.. We
need to cut them off, deny the debt and take back what they have stolen
in gold and property and in the public ownership of energy corporations
and financial corporation, with dividends going to everyone who claims a
share( who needs it). We need to stop paying for our own enslavement!
Internet censorship is what they are aiming for, piracy is a red
herring, a Digital Pearl Harbor, like the war on terror, just another
excuse to take our freedoms away. Don’t watch TV, it will imprison your mind w/o you knowledge or consent.
David Icke is right about most things as bizarre as that sounds. look
into it. Read “the Franklin Cover-up” to realize the network they have
created( written by senator John DeCamp who reveals that many of our
politicians and community leaders are involved in satanism , mind
control, ritual abuse and murder of children. He is Republican and
wasn’t expecting this and doesn’t go into implication in the book, but
the book is a well documented and will help create to the cognitive
dissonnance you need to stop believing in “the world that is pulled over
your eyes to blind you from the truth” After that read “And the truth
shall set you free” as welll as other David Icke books, Even if you can’
except everything he says, the vast majority is verifiable information
about who owns the system and how it operates. If we will stop a
global fascist state, We need to realize our true potential. This world is not sane 4 a reason, We are being led by people tat have given their will to dark forces- possibly demons, but Im not Christian at all, but this info really requires us to take an expanded view. We are awake! We say (kNOw More).

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